


American Outlaws

by manic_intent



Category: Red Dead Redemption, Red Dead Redemption 2
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Suicidal Ideation, Full spoilers for the game, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, NOTE: THIS FIC IS MOSTLY T-RATED, Pining, That Postcanon fic which ignores the epilogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-16
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-24 07:43:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 39,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16635764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manic_intent/pseuds/manic_intent
Summary: “Bounty’s for one ‘Jim Milton’,” Sadie said, as she got close to the man under the oak tree. “Wanted for murder, robbery, and unnatural acts.”“Unnatural what?”“Don’t got details on here.” Sadie passed the folded up poster to her hunting partner. “You all right?”Arthur Morgan didn’t answer her as he smoothed open the poster. He was aggressively smoking a cigarette, his second, judging from the stub on the grass.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I really have no self control haha. Full spoilers for the game so:
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“Bounty’s for one ‘Jim Milton’,” Sadie said, as she got close to the man under the oak tree. “Wanted for murder, robbery, and unnatural acts.”

“Unnatural what?” 

“Don’t got details on here.” Sadie passed the folded up poster to her hunting partner. “You all right?”

Arthur Morgan didn’t answer her as he smoothed open the poster. He was aggressively smoking a cigarette, his second, judging from the stub on the grass. Still looked deathly pale, and the shotgun coat he’d once filled out so solidly hung awkwardly over his frame. Made him look like a wirework mannequin, badly animated. 

Ghosts, that’s what Arthur had called them once. If she was a ghost, Sadie knew what kind she was. A banshee, a screaming revenant reforged from vengeance, moved inevitably towards violence. Arthur wasn’t such a sort. It’d been a year and a bit since Roanoke Ridge and Sadie still wasn’t sure what Arthur had become. Most days he seemed to hang on to life with a dazed kinda indifference. Even after being dug out of the snow mostly dead by Charles and nursed back to health by Rains Fall’s tribe. 

“Okay,” Arthur said. He stubbed out the cigarette. “Though who the hell did they pay to draw the likeness, a three-year-old kid? I don’t even rightly know what this scribble is meant to be. Man with a beard? Hell, that describes just about most folks out here.” 

“That’s why it’s such a big bounty. Sketchy details. Dangerous criminal.” Sadie pointed at the carefully printed “$500” on the poster. “You in or not? If you ain’t, I could do it myself.”

“So why don’t you?” Arthur handed her back the poster. 

Sadie swallowed her temper. Arthur had been bewildered to find himself alive, according to Charles. Having to keep on breathing disoriented him. The lack of purpose made him listless. At the end, Rains Fall had told Charles to take Arthur away, if only because his continued presence painted a huge target on the tribes’ back with the Pinkertons still looking. Charles had found Sadie trying to eke out a reputation as a bounty hunter in the Great Plains and had dumped Arthur on her hands. Lucky her. 

“Thought you might need the exercise,” Sadie said. She tucked the poster away. “But if you’d rather drink away your sorrows and turn into another Uncle, be my fucking guest.”

Arthur flinched. Sadie hadn’t meant to snap at him, but she’d lost the capacity for kindness when she’d watched her Jake get murdered before her eyes. When she’d watched the life she’d built go up in flames. She’d been unmoored then as well for weeks. Listless, eating, sleeping. 

Arthur had been kind to her then. She owed him fair return, at least. She could try to fake compassion. “Never you mind,” Sadie said, more carefully. “Take it easy. Hunt us some dinner instead.” 

“Naw. I’ll ride with you.” Arthur pulled himself onto the back of his golden warhorse. Buell, that was his name. Gorgeous creature, gleaming from nose to tail and proud to boot. Ornery though. He’d tried to kick Sadie at least twice now. 

“Mean-tempered thing,” Sadie said. She whistled her strawberry roan, Missy, over and got onto her back. “Don’t know why you bother with him.” 

“His previous master willed him to me,” Arthur said. That was a little surprising. Usually, Arthur didn’t care to talk. Would sit in silence the whole day if he could. 

“Seriously? To you?”

“Yeah. Ran into him when he was in a bit of trouble. Was a veteran, an amputee. He’d fallen off and Buell had run off with his wooden leg. After that we became friends, I guess. Then he—Hamish—had a hunting accident. Gored by a boar. Gave me Buell before he went.” Arthur breathed out, as though talking that much exhausted him. 

“Shit. Surviving a war, only to go out like that. I’m sorry.” Awful way to die. 

“Think he preferred it that way, somehow. Dying like that.” Arthur stank of cigarette smoke as he drew Buell up next to Missy. 

“Sorry about your other horse.” Charles had said something about Ghost having been shot. That was a shame. Sadie liked her horses bigger, but the white Arabian that Arthur had caught out at Lake Isabella had been a damned sight. As beautiful as Dutch’s Count.

Arthur shrugged, too drained for anything but indifference. “Lead the way.” 

“Right. I asked around. Seems Milton was last heard of getting into a gunslinger duel in Whatnot.” 

“…Where?” 

“It’s a one-horse town. Whatnot. Someone got lazy on naming day, I guess.” In a country with town names like ‘Armadillo’ and ‘Two Egg’, Sadie had long learned not to try and judge. “It’s a day’s ride from here.” 

“By the time we get there, he’d be long gone. If he’s smart,” Arthur said. Buell kept pace with Missy as Sadie took them towards the dusty trail winding through the long grass, glad to be getting some real exercise for once. Even though Arthur was well enough to ride, he didn’t often do much but mope around camp and draw in his book. 

“You got any better ideas?” Sadie tried not to snap, but it was close. 

“Naw. It’s somewhere to be.” 

Sadie tightened her grip briefly on her reins. “Y’know. You don’t have to tag along with me. I mean, I know Charles dumped you on me and told you to keep an eye on me but I really don’t need keeping an eye on,” Sadie said. Hell, it was the opposite. Arthur didn’t even always bother hunting for them both. Hadn’t shaved since he’d become her problem neither. As to bathing, sometimes Sadie was tempted to drag Arthur to the nearest river and dunk him in it until either the dirt washed off or Arthur woke up from whatever daze he was in. Or drowned.

Arthur looked her in the eyes, an uncommon enough thing now that Sadie nearly averted her gaze out of surprise. “Think you and I both know that it’s the other way around. I’m sorry.” 

“You really sorry, or you just saying that? ‘Cos I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Morgan, but—” Sadie bit down on the rest of her words.

“But what?” Arthur didn’t even raise his voice. He did look away though, contemplative. “Might as well say it.” 

“You’re like the dead walking, you are.” That was the kindest way Sadie could put it. “Come on. You did what you wanted, didn’t you? Got out who you could get out. Saved who you could. Even me.” 

That got a humourless smile. “You didn’t need saving, Miss Adler. Least of all by me.” 

“I was trying to be nice,” Sadie conceded. “I been keeping tabs on the others on the quiet. Those I could find anyhow. They doing good. So. Cheer the hell up. You sad bastard.”

Arthur exhaled. “I know, I know.”

“No, you don’t fucking know. So what if you’ve been running with Dutch so long that you don’t know how to do nothing else? So what if Dutch turned out to be a right asshole at the end? I say good fucking riddance to all that. The world moves on.” 

This got her another glance. “How do you move on?” Arthur asked. He gestured at her duster coat, her new hat, her gleaming gear. “How do you just. Pick yourself up. Do something else? You’ve had your revenge. Finished what you wanted.” 

“I’m not done with the world yet and it ain’t done with me,” Sadie said, because the world had given her no options for despair, and as yet no option for death. The world had dumped her on the Van der Linde gang and she had taken of that what she could. If someday she was going to die in as ugly a fashion as she had lived the last couple of years of her life, hell, she’d already gotten what she’d wanted out of the world. Not everybody could say that.

“Guess I could say the same.” Arthur rubbed a hand slowly over his face. “All right, Sadie. Let’s hunt us a bounty.”

#

Unsurprisingly, Milton was nowhere to be found in Whatnot. It wasn’t as small a town as Sadie had predicted: had a general store, a gun shop, saloon, even a hotel. They hitched up their horses and this time Arthur listened to Sadie’s pointed comments about getting a bath. Felt like he was going through the motions at first, soaping away the grime. Arthur lay in the hot water for a while, staring at the ceiling until the bath started to grow lukewarm. Dried himself and stared into the mirror.

Arthur Morgan. Once Dutch van der Linde’s feared right-hand man. Now literally a shadow of his former self. He could still see his ribs under his skin, and there were bruised hollows under his eyes. Exhaustion was compressed into every line of him, every hair. He’d been living on fumes near the end and now he wasn’t sure what he was living on. Somedays it felt like the Angel of Death had tapped Arthur on the shoulder and judged him unworthy of peace, and all he could do was sit and bear witness to nothing. He breathed slowly. No cough. Charles and Rains Fall had called it a miracle cure. Arthur knew better. Miracles were happier things.

He dressed slowly and got a haircut and a shave at the barber behind the bar. When Arthur caught up with Sadie by the general store, she did a double take and grinned. “Wow, look what was hiding under all that sadness and grime and masculine pain.” 

Arthur grimaced and made a show of looking around the store. The shopkeeper looked at him and back at Sadie and said, “As I was saying, miss. I didn’t see nothing.” 

“But do you know who might of seen something? Come on. Your store’s right on the main street. Ain’t so busy that a duel wouldn’t have been a spectator sport,” Sadie said. 

“No ma’am, no.” The shopkeeper stared uneasily at the door. “I didn’t see nothing.”

Arthur let out a slow breath. He strode towards the counter, looming behind Sadie. He could still do that, at least. Even with all the bulk he'd lost. “You got a nice store here, sir,” Arthur said.

“Uh, thank you, sir.”

“Pity if some things might get damaged just because you decided to be rude to a lady,” Arthur said, in the same mild tone. “The cash register, for one. Or your gunpowder store might catch fire. Sad accidents like that.” 

“Now you know there ain’t no need for that,” Sadie said, patting Arthur on the arm. “We don’t want a repeat of what happened over in Two Egg.” 

Arthur played along. “Could be I take exception when general store proprietors decide they don’t want to treat women proper. What is this world coming to, eh?” 

“You do that again and I’m gonna have to limit your access to dynamite,” Sadie said, giving a pretty good impression of exasperation. 

“No! No. All right.” The proprietor dropped his voice to a whisper. “Okay. There was a duel. Some stranger came into town. Big beard. Skinny guy, big hat. He went for a drink at the saloon. Don’t know what happened, but next we knew he was having a standoff with one of the Corsair boys. Rick O’Malley. Mean son of a, uh, son of a gun. Pardon my language.”

Sadie smiled benevolently. “That’s all right. So O’Malley lost?”

“Got shot in the head right outside my store. Hell, I didn’t even see the stranger draw on him, he was that quick. After that the stranger lit off. We buried O’Malley over in the church but.” The proprietor shook his head, shuddering. “This ain’t good.”

“What ain’t?” Arthur asked. 

“He was a _Corsair_ boy. Matthew Corsair, he owns the lands ‘round these parts. Owns my shop, too. Big rancher out west. O’Malley was a cousin of his. Now he’s jumping mad and looking to take it out on people. Strangers, particularly. Then he’d start on people who helped strangers.” The proprietor gave Arthur and Sadie a rabbity look. “So I’d appreciate it if, well. Me and you talking, it never happened.” 

No wonder the hotel staff and the barber had been so close-mouthed. Arthur had just put it down to their understandable distaste at having to deal with a stinking wild man. “Right,” Arthur said. 

“You see where this stranger went?” Sadie asked. 

“No. But you two ain’t the only bounty hunters in these parts. A group of your sort rode through town yesterday? Heading east towards uh, Burnt Porcupine Valley I think. Boss was a Frenchman, uh—”

Sadie scowled. “Mister Berger? Skinny guy, green waistcoat? Gold plated rifle?” 

“Yeah, him.” The proprietor looked impressed. “Guess it must be a small world and a funny one eh, bounty hunting? Frenchmen with gold rifles and women uh…” He trailed off under Sadie’s stare. 

“Good day to you sir,” Sadie said icily. She stalked out of the store with Arthur on her heels. 

As they walked over to where their horses were hitched, Arthur said, “I maybe see why you want me to come along on your jobs.” 

Sadie sniffed. “Oh, they’d tell me what I wanna know eventually. Just takes longer. But sure. Having my question come out of a big strapping guy’s mouth sure seems to give it a different kinda volume.” She playfully smacked Arthur on the arm. 

“If it helps, that was pretty much what Dutch kept me around for too,” Arthur said. 

“And Strauss, hm?” 

Arthur looked away. Usually, when Sadie brought Strauss up, Arthur just pretended not to hear her. Today it felt like she was owed something more. “I hated doing those jobs.” 

“What?” 

“The debt collecting. I stopped doing it when we moved near Rhodes. Just. Lost the heart for it, I guess. Nothing in that kinda work but misery.” 

Sadie laughed. It was a harsh hyena sound, one that snapped Arthur’s stare to her. “And y’all think robbing payroll and banks didn’t spread misery? What world were y’all living in? Payroll disappears? People can’t make rent. Buy food. Kids starve. Medicines don't get bought. People like Dutch, like Colm, who do what they want and hell take the consequences? There’s always misery involved. Always.” 

That made Arthur go quiet as they mounted up. Sadie had a point. One that Arthur had done his best over the years not to see but it was there, worming closer and closer to the light. “You still rode with us,” Arthur said, as they started east out of town. 

“The part of me that cared about other people and their misery burned away a while ago. You watched the burning too. You were there.” Sadie slowed her horse down. “Hold up.” 

Coming down the road towards them and the town was a tight group of riders. Five of them, fine horses all. Fully armed, hard-eyed men burnt brown by the sun under their hats. The man in the centre was a tall man in a round hat and a huge mustache. Fine shirt and a fine blue vest. He drew rein as his group came close and looked them over. “Bounty hunters?”

“Who’s asking?” Sadie asked. Arthur kept his hands loose near the holsters of his pistols. His mind went through the odds out of sheer habit. Not too good if it turned out to be a shooting. He’d take out Blue Vest first. Try to get at least a couple of the others. Then if he broke right and Sadie broke left maybe they could—

The man in the blue vest smiled thinly at them. “You’re a day late. Some fancy Frenchman and his posse rode out yesterday after Milton. If they’re as good as they said they were, they’ve probably caught up with him by now.” 

“Well, I ain’t seen no one dragged back to town and his bounty’s still ain’t been taken down so, thanking you kindly but I’d be trying my luck,” Sadie said warily. 

“I haven’t seen a _lady_ work as a bounty hunter before,” Blue vest said, drawing out the word ‘lady’ in veiled disdain. Arthur stiffened, but Sadie didn't even flinch.

“Now you has. Ain’t it your lucky day, mister.” 

Blue vest glanced at Arthur. “Does he talk?”

“He prefers to let his guns do the talking in any kinda social situation. I know. Sad. It’s a work in progress,” Sadie shot back.

The stranger barked a laugh. “You’re a bounty hunter all right. You people. Think you can mouth off to who you want, do what you want. Just one step away from being outlaws yourselves. Well, go on then. If you find Milton before the Frenchman, I’ll cut you the same deal as I cut him. I don’t care if you’re brown or black or blue or a woman if you can bring me what I want. Get Milton to me over at my ranch. Ask for Matthew Corsair. I’ll pay you double what the bounty’s worth.” 

“Why, that’s right generous of you, Mister Corsair,” Sadie said, without any warmth whatsoever. Corsair tipped his hat to her anyway and rode on around them towards town, followed by his men. Sadie nudged her horse back into a trot once they were clear.

“Nice guy,” Arthur said, looking back over his shoulder. Corsair was stopping outside the saloon, hitching up his horse. Only one of his men was dismounting. The rest stayed mounted on the street. The scene had the look of a shakedown of sorts. Maybe Corsair wasn’t just a landowner. 

“Rich guys think being rich coats their balls in gold and silver and everyone else should kiss up to them,” Sadie said, rolling her eyes. “They’re the same everywhere.” 

“Doubling a $500 bounty? He must’ve really liked his cousin.”

“Don’t know about that. Might just be a status thing. Make an example out of this poor bastard,” Sadie pulled a face. 

“So you ain’t thinking of taking him up on his offer?”

“Him? Nah. I’m a bounty hunter, not a hired gun. Besides, I didn’t like his face. Now c’mon. We got to catch up to the Frenchman. Big posse like that, can’t be that hard to track.” Sadie grinned at him. “Even for a washed up sad bastard.” 

Despite himself, Arthur chuckled. It was a hollow sound still, but Sadie’s smile grew wider at the sound of it. “Yes ma'am. I hear you. I’ll earn my keep.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Refs:  
> http://mentalfloss.com/article/502251/funniest-town-name-all-50-states


	2. Chapter 2

Berger and his men weren’t hard to find, especially when it got dark. Big damn campfire on a mostly flat plain with lots of horses hitched close by? Dead giveaway. Crouched on a distant hill, Sadie and Arthur surveyed the camp with binoculars. “Don’t look like they caught him,” Sadie said. The camp was orderly, which wasn’t a great sign. Berger ran a tight ship. 

“Yeah, they ain’t celebrating nothing. You cross Berger before? Sounded like you knew him.” Arthur had at least stopped trying to smoke and drink himself to death for now. Showed there hadn’t been pain to dull. Just Arthur trying to fill nothing with nothing. Now there was a glimmer of the man Sadie used to know, one who’d run headlong into gunfire to save her if she needed him. She was gladder than she’d thought she’d be, even at so little. 

“Crossed him once. He stole a bounty from me. Didn’t have the firepower to fight back.” Sadie curled her lip. “Just stopped me in the middle of the road, surrounded me with his men. Threw me fifteen dollars and took a three hundred dollar bounty ‘off my hands’ that I’d caught myself fair and square. What an asshole.”

“This ain’t a revenge thing, is it?”

“Obviously not. I didn’t even know he was here. ‘Course, if he were to expire in the process of us picking up this Jim Milton feller, I ain’t gonna shed no tears.” One could only hope. 

“Duly noted,” Arthur said. Sounded amused, even. That was good. Amusement was a kinder emotion than whatever Arthur tended to cycle through nowadays. “I see him. Skinny bastard. Fancy hat. What now?”

“I’m thinking we give Berger a wide berth and keep trying to pick up Milton’s trail. He must’ve seen them coming by a mile. Should’ve gone to ground. Nowhere to hide out on the plains so he probably ain’t even here. If he’s smart.” Sadie wasn’t too sure about that, admittedly. Surely a man with a $500 bounty wouldn’t go around picking fights in rancher towns. 

Then again, life with the Van der Linde gang had quickly recalibrated what Sadie considered common sense. Men. “Know what I would’ve done?” Arthur said. 

“Found a vantage point, picked them off in the night with a rolling block rifle, rode in and gunned down the rest with a pump-action shotgun?” Sadie glanced at Arthur, daring him to deny it.

“Maybe,” Arthur said. He smiled faintly. “Maybe not. No cover ‘round these parts if things go sideways. You reading my mind now, Miss Adler?”

“I don’t need to read your mind. I knows you. I’m downright shocked you’re still breathing somedays,” Sadie said. 

She’d said too much—Arthur’s smile faded. “So am I. Well, what would you have done?” 

“Ridden away somewhere to lie low. Actually. Lie low. I ain’t as good a shot as you boys are, but more importantly, I ain’t got gunpowder and buckshot for brains.” Sadie hesitated. “You think that’s what’s gonna happen? This guy is gonna take on Berger and his friends single-handed?”

“I don’t know. Takes a lot to rack up a $500 bounty.” Arthur turned away from the camp, scanning the dark. He nearly fumbled the binoculars at the sudden loud crack of a gunshot. “Christ!” 

Sadie jumped to her feet and scanned the camp again. People were scattering from the fire, grabbing weapons, running into the grass. Someone was slumped facedown by the campfire, bleeding copiously. As another man backpedaled, his head burst into a fine mist. “Shit. What is _wrong_ with people? He’s gonna get himself killed! It’s $500 dead _or_ alive. Where’s that bastard?” 

“There. I saw a flash. Muzzle fire.” Arthur was already swinging himself up onto Buell’s back. “Come on. You still wanna get to this guy before Berger?”

Sadie swore under her breath as she hauled herself onto Missy. She hated riding in the dark. Especially off a trail. Tried not to think of Missy tripping or breaking a leg or worse on the uneven surface as she kept pace with Arthur. “He’ll hear us coming,” Sadie told Arthur. “Or Berger will see us and think we attacked him.” 

“Don’t got a choice if you want to reach him first. Jesus!” Arthur ducked as a bullet whined overhead. Berger’s men had noticed them. 

“We _could_ have waited for Berger to make the arrest and _then_ robbed Berger,” Sadie complained. There was another loud crack. Someone screamed in the grass. 

Arthur flashed her a sharp grin, wolflike in the dull moon. “Now where’s the fun in that?” He kicked Buell into a gallop. Something—no, someone—in the distance was moving, growing more visible now as they got closer. Jumping on a horse. Twisting in saddle and raising the rifle to their shoulder as they nudged their horse forward. Someone at Berger’s camp let out a yell of pain. 

“Damn he’s a good shot.” Arthur whistled.

“Let’s catch his ass first before you admire it,” Sadie shot back. Missy was faster than Buell. Outpacing the warhorse, Sadie urged her on towards the fleeing figure, head low, praying he didn’t turn her into a fine mist. Or her horse. Closer. The person she chased was a man in a wide-brimmed hat and a big beard, broad at the shoulders and slender at the waist. He was pulling another long-muzzled gun from his saddle as he kicked his horse into a gallop. As he twisted in the saddle to face her he flinched and dropped the gun. It’d been shot out of his hands. 

“Just give up!” Arthur yelled behind her. “Don’t make us chase you, you bastard!” 

To her astonishment, the fleeing man turned his horse around to face them. Didn’t reach for another gun neither. “ _Arthur_?” he asked, in a familiar hoarse voice Sadie that hadn’t heard in over a year. He stared at her. “Sadie?” 

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Sadie reined up so sharply Missy whinnied in protest. “ _John_? Wait. _You’re_ Jim Milton?” 

“Um,” John said, blinking owlishly at her, then he stared back at Arthur, gawking openly. “What in all that’s good and holy. Arthur. I thought you was dead. I thought—”

“Whatever you thought just keep _moving_ ,” Arthur growled, with a glance behind him. “Move. Move!” 

“Why do we keep having to rescue you!” Sadie told John as she drew her shotgun from her saddle. 

“I ain’t needing rescuing,” John protested, spurring his horse back into a canter. He twisted in his saddle again, downing the first man who cleared the ridge with a shot from his repeater. “Far as I see the two of you suddenly happened right on my business. Not that I ain’t glad to see the both of you. I… Goddamn but am I glad to see you both.”

“You can cry later. Shoot first,” Sadie said. 

Someone from Berger’s gang was spurring a fast horse, coming closer. Big goddamned hero. Arthur leaned back in his saddle and took quick aim with one of his Schofields. The man jerked back and fell, one leg getting tangled in the stirrups. Dragged away in the dirt by his panicking horse. They galloped on, Arthur spurring Buell into taking the lead. The big horse huffed and grunted like a bellows but there was joy in his thundering stride, in the shake of his proud head against the wind. Perhaps Buell knew and preferred this version of his master. 

They rode half the night, slowing before their horses got too lathered. Crossing streams and doubling back until Arthur was satisfied that they weren’t followed. John led them to the remains of a cabin in thickening woods. As they hitched their horses and dismounted, John took a slow step towards Arthur. 

“What?” Arthur patted Buell’s nose. “I see the years ain’t given you no wisdom. The hell were you thinking boy, taking on those people by yourself in a straight up gunfight with no goddamned cover to speak of? Maybe you should bait another wolf to eat your face again. The intelligence boost from the last time seems to have worn right off.”

“Jesus, it’s really you.” John actually stifled a strangled sound, like a low sob. He walked right up to Arthur and hugged him tightly, burying his face in Arthur’s shoulder. Arthur froze, his hands going still in the air, then he patted John’s shoulders awkwardly.

“Yeah, it’s me. I’m alive.”

“No actual thanks to him,” Sadie said. She prodded John in the shoulder. “Don’t I get a hug?” John laughed and let Arthur go, hugging her and picking her up as he did, swinging her around as though she weighed nothing. “Okay, okay. I asked for a hug, not to get my ribs crushed. Calm down, Marston.” 

“No campfire,” Arthur said. He took tins of canned food from his saddlebag, then unsaddled Buell. John and Sadie followed suit. “Not while Berger’s likely looking for us now.”

“Yeah, thanks for that,” Sadie told John. “I keep my nose clean for this long and you fuck that all up.”

John chuckled. He looked abashed, at least. “Sorry.” 

“What happened to Abigail? And Jack? They okay?” Sadie asked. 

John’s expression went still and blank. Before Sadie could say anything, Arthur shouldered past John. “We going in or what?” 

“Uh yeah. Right.” John let them into the cabin, which wasn’t locked. “Home sweet home,” John said, with an ironic little wave. He lit a lantern by the door. Inside, the cabin was sort of neat. Most of the broken furniture had been pushed aside. There were a few crates that remained that were what John had been using for a table and chairs. A bedroll was lined up at a corner. Nothing else. The air smelled musty and a little foul, as though someone had lived here too long unwashed. 

“Seriously, you boys. Left alone to yourselves and y’all go all feral,” Sadie said. She sat down on the cleanest-looking crate. 

“Can’t argue with that,” John said. His eyes kept getting drawn towards Arthur, wide with wonder. “Arthur though… Y-you look good. How?” 

“Don’t rightly know how,” Arthur said. He sat and started opening cans. “Charles dug me out of that mountain ridge. Hid me among the tribe as they were moving north. I gave a pretty good impression of a dead man for a long time. Even after I stopped coughing. Until Charles got enough of my shit and dragged me back south and dumped me on Sadie.”

“Haven’t thanked him for that,” Sadie said. She grabbed a tin of beans. Cold rations didn’t use to suit her none. She’d long grown less picky. “I was making a living bounty hunting. Picked up this in Ginger.” She passed John the crumpled up bounty poster. John unfolded it and grimaced. “Five hundred dollars? Really?”

“Things kinda… snowballed,” John muttered.

“Unnatural acts?” Arthur asked, as he tucked into canned beef. “The hell is that? Do I wanna know?”

“…Probably not,” John said. He was reddening fast. 

“Aww, now you’ve just done and made me curious,” Sadie said, cuffing John playfully on the arm. “C’mon. I’m really curious. And you owe me.”

“Owe you how?” John asked.

“I broke you out of a state penitentiary! You forgot already? Maybe you do need your head checked. Or another wolf bite,” Sadie said. She shook her head in mock disappointment. 

“Leave off, Sadie. Dutch and the rest of us, we’ve been accused of pretty much everything under the sun,” Arthur said as he ate. Sadie shot him an incredulous look—John clearly was hiding something—but Arthur was already talking again. “Abigail and Jack. They safe?”

“Yeah. They’re in Canada,” John said. He relaxed. “I send them money sometimes.”

“I’m…” Arthur exhaled. “I got to say. I’m really disappointed in you. I thought. You and Abigail, and Jack—”

“It didn’t work out,” John cut in. 

“Why the hell not?” Arthur frowned at John. 

“Look at us. Are any of us right cut out to be parents?” John demanded.

“You. Could. _Try_ ,” Arthur bit out. 

“I tried. Look. I ain’t good for them. They knows it, I knows it. I tried to do right by them. Still do. Nevermind that the boy. Ain’t. _Mine_ ,” John growled.

“This again?” Arthur said, looking away with a curl to his mouth. “Come on, John. We’ve all been through this.” 

“Jack and Abigail sure think different,” Sadie said. She instinctively wanted to back Arthur up on this, especially since she’d liked both Jack and Abigail. The boy was a nice kid, if a little quiet. And Abigail—like the other women—had been carefully kind to Sadie in the mountains when she’d needed kindness. Even Mrs Grimshaw. She remembered that well.

“You know how I know that?” John snapped. He shoved up to his feet. 

“Sit down, Marston,” Arthur said. 

John glared at them both. “I’ve never slept with Abigail.”

“Jesus, John,” Sadie said, blinking. “You two shared a tent—”

“I knows what we shared. I never once touched her. I know she did the rounds of the rest of the gang but not me. That’s why she named me as the father when she got pregnant. ‘Cos she wanted to be done with all that. Sweet-talked Molly into getting Dutch to back her up. I’m thinking Jack is really Dutch’s kid.”

Arthur stared. “John—”

John barrelled on, flushed with anger. “Just that Molly didn’t want the truth of that and Abigail knew that a Van der Linde kid would never have a normal life with that kinda weight on their name. So I bore with it for a year after the baby was born. When I couldn’t deal with all the bullshit from everyone no more, I left. For a bit.” 

Arthur was frowning to himself. “You never said you didn’t sleep with her… no, you definitely did. Two of you went off to the woods a few times. Came back with clothes mussed up. The hell were you two doing out there then? Playing cards?”

“Talking, mostly. It was a mutual deal. Gives her a break from stuff in camp and from goddamned Bill Williamson in particular. And gives me some cover.” John’s hands clenched up, as though he’d suddenly said too much. 

“Cover? For?” Arthur asked. 

“Think we don’t need to know,” Sadie said quickly.

“No, I do want to know.” Arthur got to his feet. “Call me confused. The way I planned things, most of it was to get you and your _family_ out. A family. Now you’re telling me that you left them in Canada? Came back down and got right back into your bad habits? Jesus, John. Get a hold of yourself. Are you a man or what?” 

John rocked back on his feet as though struck. “All right, you two,” Sadie said, but John was shaking his head, making a hoarse, rough sound. 

“I ain’t ever been interested in Abigail. Ain’t just her. It’s all women. You wanted to know what that ‘unnatural acts’ rap on my poster is? Fine. I’ll tell you. I was caught fucking another man, all right? Shot the man who caught us. Picked up the wallet he’d dropped on the way out. Might’ve stolen his horse trying to get away. Shot back at the law as they came after me. Goddamned mess all round. There. Happy now? Because fuck your plans and fuck _you_ , Arthur.” John stormed out. 

“Christ, John. Wait up, goddamnit.” Arthur followed John out.

Sadie sat in the silence of the cabin for a while, then philosophically finished her can of food. After she waited for a bit longer and no one returned, she ate Arthur’s too.

#

Arthur caught up with John deeper in the woods after he’d nearly broken his neck a couple of times tripping over tree roots and uneven ground. He’d never had decent night vision. John stared warily at him as Arthur slowed to a stop, wheezing with his hands pressed to his knees.

“You all right?” John asked, subdued.

“Not coughing no more. Everything else? Kinda. Getting there,” Arthur said, in between gasps for breath. 

“You seriously just randomly got better on your own? Because I uh. Did a bit of asking around, reading around. When you started to get real sick and everyone could see the symptoms. Every doctor told me what you had was fatal.” 

“Yeah, turned out I beat the odds. Nobody’s more surprised than me. Clean mountain air and rest, maybe.” Arthur leaned against a tree when he was done struggling for air. Hell, he really was turning into Uncle. It was an unsettling thought and he welcomed the unease. At least he could feel that. Finding John had somehow kicked Arthur out of the malaise he’d been in. Torn away the fog. 

“Okay. Well. Take it easy.” John sounded concerned. 

“Sorry,” Arthur said gruffly.

“For what?”

“When Dutch said… about Jack… and Abigail was, well… and well you…” Arthur took in a deep breath. “Okay. I guess. I should’ve believed you.” 

“Nah,” John said, He folded his arms and leaned back against a tree. “I couldn’t prove it without… y’know. Still ain’t real sure about what Dutch felt about men who, uh. But I sure knew what Bill, Micah, and Javier thought about that. So it kinda suited me too. Way things stood. While we were all in the gang.” 

“I don’t. I mean, I don’t think you’re any less… or… maybe you should’ve just… well, ain’t no _should’ve_ , but. I really thought. You and Abigail.” 

“I knows you did. So did everybody else. That’s fine. It’s in the past now. I really am glad you’re alive. That you and Sadie are well,” John said. There was a reserve to him now though, something Arthur hadn’t seen before. Dutch and Hosea had scooped John up from nowhere when John was a kid and he’d grown up worshipping them. He’d worshipped Arthur too for a time, used to follow Arthur around camp like a puppy. Arthur remembered that. That scrawny, clumsy kid was all grown up now. 

“Sorry you felt like you had to hide,” Arthur said. That was the right thing to say, finally. John blinked, some of his reserve melting. “Though you had the right of it and. I would’ve backed you up.”

Nope. Wrong thing now. John looked away. “Okay. Good to know.” 

What was that John said in the snow? “You’re my brother,” Arthur said slowly. John stiffened. “That don’t change.” This was the kinda thing that had never mattered to Arthur. Didn’t affect the content of anyone’s character. 

“Sure. All right.” John started to walk back towards the cabin. He shivered as Arthur grabbed his arm. “Arthur?”

“We good?” Arthur asked. 

John pulled out of his grip without meeting his eyes. “We’re good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes:  
> I always found the Marston family kinda weird. Maybe it was the vibe in RDR1 or my lack of a maternal instinct… it doesn’t really help that you spend the whole game not really thinking much about them. It’s actually very easy to miss their reference at the start, even—a friend of mine accidentally skipped one of the opening scenes as she started playing it recently on a secondhand PS3 and she didn’t even know Abigail and Jack existed until I told her about it. 
> 
> Then when you finally get them back it’s always so… boring? Like John is just going through the motions. There’s no real joy in his family life. Same as RDR2, except for one seriously awkward epilogue mission. It’s probably my slash glasses, but John’s whole relationship with Abigail and Jack is really antagonistic through RDR2. He’s adamant Jack isn’t his. He actually runs away from the gang when Jack is a 1 yr old. He does crack it when Jack gets kidnapped but tbh, so does everyone (even Bill…). I guess I never found that whole business convincing.
> 
> tldr: in this ‘verse, Jack really isn’t John’s son.


	3. Chapter 3

“We don’t need to go into town,” Arthur said. They stood on a road that wound lazily into a scattering of wooden buildings in the dust beyond. Stranger was a small town, smaller than Ginger and Whatnot. Probably only existed because of the railway that snaked by beside it. The iron horse, belching smoke and bringing opportunity.

Opportunity. Sadie was starting to dislike the word. “We don’t _need_ to go into town. I want to. Meaning me. You boys stay out here.” 

“And you think that ain’t gonna draw attention?” John asked. His eyes were hidden under his hat. He’d shaved with Arthur’s mirror and cut his hair down with Sadie’s scissors. Folded into one of Arthur’s finer outfits, John no longer looked like some kinda desperado. “Two men sitting on the road watching the town?” 

“I’m sure y’all will behave yourselves and keep a low profile.” Sadie patted Arthur’s arm firmly. 

“Remind me why you _want_ to go into town again?” Arthur asked, openly exasperated. “This is a risk. We ain’t that far from Whatnot or Corsair. Less far than that from Berger.” 

“Firstly, this town has got a sheriff. Which means work. Legal work. Two, I want to see if John’s likeness has gotten as far as Stranger. Three, I need supplies from the general store after all them days hiding out in that cabin. Feminine. Supplies.” Sadie stared at Arthur until his ears reddened and he looked away. Ha. 

“Right,” Arthur muttered. “We’ll wait. If there’s any sign of trouble in town—”

“You boys can trust me to get myself out of it. I ain’t the ones with thousand dollar bounties over several states.” Sadie turned her horse and started towards town before Arthur or John could protest any further. She didn’t hear them start after her. 

Good. The Van der Linde boys needed a firm hand or they tended to stir up trouble. Hosea understood that. It was Dutch who tended to fan the flames instead of keeping people in line. Sadie didn’t intend to make that same mistake with the people she chose to ride with. Now that she _had_ a choice.

The general store was run by a husband and wife team, to Sadie’s relief. She paid up for the clean rags she needed, along with canned food and medicines. Bought some clothes in what she thought was John’s size. As she packed all that into Missy’s saddlebags she noticed a spotty young man with a silver star on his vest staring at her from across the street. 

Well. It hadn’t ever been Sadie’s nature to hide from her problems. She finished packing and headed right over towards him, keeping her hands loose by her gunbelts. He straightened up as he saw her and tipped his hat. “Ma’am.”

“We got business, sheriff?” Sadie asked, even though it was clear from the young man’s age that he was probably a deputy at most. 

“Deputy sheriff, ma’am. Sorry, just. Ain’t seen many well. Ladies wearing what you do out here. You and all your… guns. Name’s Mick.” 

“Sadie,” Sadie said. She’d briefly wondered whether she should give a fake name, but hell. Sadie had set out to make a name for herself in legitimate business. Fake names didn’t work so well on that front. “Bounty hunter. You got any work, sir?”

“Bounty hunter!” Mick whistled. “Why, that’s. Interesting.” 

“Interesting in a good way, or a bad way?” Sadie often found that belligerence and sufficient hardware on her person helped pave the way where politeness didn’t. 

Mick lowered his stare and mumbled something. So it was gonna be one of those towns. Sadie strode past him into the sheriff’s office. Nobody was in the cells. Behind one of the desks was an old man, deep into a bottle of whiskey with his hat rolled away on the floor. Had a silver star pinned to his vest. The sheriff, Sadie supposed. She helped herself to the bounties pinned to the board. Nothing on John ‘Jim Milton’ Marston. Nothing on Arthur or the rest. Other than Dutch. Dutch’s poster stared bleakly at her from the corner. Good likeness.

“Some of those are hard men,” Mick said behind her. “Pretty dangerous for a gal to take on.” 

Sadie had a routine for dealing with sheriffs and nosy deputies now who thought they knew what a woman could and could not do. She counted to ten, smiled sweetly and left. And made a big show of dragging in the bounty after. Why get mad when you can get paid? So she smiled and inclined her head and strode out. 

Unfortunately, Mick trailed after her. “C’mon, miss. Nice little lady like you. How about you give me back them posters. We don’t have so many copies. I’ll buy you a drink.”

“I don’t need a drink. I do need them posters. Thanking you kindly,” Sadie said. Her trigger finger itched. Mick frowned at her. Maybe the silver badge made saying ‘no’ hard in this small town for the other women. He grabbed her by the elbow.

“Miss—” Mick hesitated. A stagecoach had just rolled into town, stopping outside the saloon. Sadie tamped down on her impulse to break his jaw. She jerked her arm out of his grip and kept walking toward her horse. “Miss! Look at me when I’m talking. Look here, you little bitch!” 

Sadie closed her eyes and tried counting to ten. She got to three before there was a yelp behind her. Turning, she blinked as she saw Berger standing over Mick, who was holding his cheek. Berger hauled Mick to his feet with a wiry strength that wasn’t obvious in his lean frame. “Not a nice word to say to a lady,” he said, tutting in his thick French accent. “Shouldn’t you apologise?”

“How dare you—” Mick yelped as Berger punched him in the stomach. He doubled over, whining in the dirt. 

“I dare many things, young man. If only because this is a tiny town in a big world. I could shoot you in the gut and leave you to die. It will be a very long time dying for you and I will be very far away. When they post my bounty, eh, I can afford it. I will pay it knowing happily that your life only cost me thirty dollars, no?” Berger drew a silver pistol, twirled it, and slotted it back into his holster. 

Mick wheezed. He had some sense at least. He looked up at Sadie with watery eyes. “S-sorry, miss. Sorry I called you names.”

“Not so hard, is it?” Berger said. He smiled, loose and at ease. Sadie wasn’t fooled in the least. She checked the town through her peripheral vision. No other Berger men lounging about that she could see. Up close, Berger reminded her unkindly of a stoat. He had a small head and a pencil mustache, a round bowler hat, and a gold watch tucked in his green vest. As Mick scuttled away to the sheriff’s office, Berger bowed to Sadie in a playful flourish. “Bonjour, Miss Adler.”

“ _Mrs_ Adler,” Sadie corrected. 

“Of course. Forgive me, madam. Of course a flower like you would be married. A tragedy for all other men.” 

Sadie grit her teeth. “What the hell do you want?” Arthur had been so sure they weren’t followed. 

Berger smiled. “Can I buy you a drink?”

“Not interested.” Sadie pointedly hung her right hand closer to her holster.

“The flower, it has thorns,” Berger said with mock sadness. “A little chat, then.”

“How about returning me the money you owe me?” Sadie shot back. “From the last time we met?” 

“Ah, I was doing you a favour,” Berger said. At Sadie’s scowl, he held up his hands. “That bounty, Monsieur Knapp, his men had been on your trail for days. Would’ve caught you before you made it back to town.” 

“Thank you so fucking kindly for the ‘favour’ then,” Sadie said, making sure to drip contempt with every word. 

“I was thinking afterward. How interesting, that a lone woman turns to a life of bounty hunting. I made some inquiries. You see, madam, small bounties like Knapp, like Milton, are things I do on the side. In between better paying work from the Pinkertons. Jobs that they get but don’t want to touch.” 

Sadie tried not to visibly tense. “Yeah? Well, ‘small bounties’ are my livelihood, so. Maybe you should keep your hands off them and stick to Pinkerton jobs.”

“Because I am a contractor I get some access to their files. I keep a little collection of all the most interesting bounties and their notes. Do you know a gentleman by the name of Dutch van der Linde?” Berger stared at her keenly.

“Don’t everyone who can read a paper?” Sadie said. 

“You’re a known associate, Madam Adler. The Pinkertons haven’t scooped you up yet because they think you’re a little fish. But sometimes little fish lead to bigger fishes, which might lead to the biggest fish of all, no?” 

If she shot Berger here—hell, could she draw faster than Berger? Sadie didn’t have much confidence in her ability to win quickdraw contests. She caught bounties through planning and stealth, usually. Shit. She should’ve brought Arthur. Or John. “I’m gonna ask you again just once. What d’you want?”

“I have a business offer. I know who you run with. Do you think I don’t know who ‘Jim Milton’ is? I’ve been following him for a while, hoping to flush him into bigger fish. I have people keeping watch in all the towns hereabouts.” Berger smiled. “A $500 bounty doesn’t interest me. I’m going after something bigger, the biggest fish of my career.”

“Dutch?” Sadie said, trying to sound casual. She wouldn't move against Dutch. He'd done everyone wrong by the end, but he'd done right by her for longer before that.

“Not Dutch. Someone more dangerous. And I’ll need dangerous men for that job. And women,” Berger said with another graceful flourish, “like yourself. A Pinkerton contract. It’ll work out to three thousand per person on the bounty alone, but that’s only a small part of it. There’d be gold, too. Enough gold to retire on.”

“I heard that sorta sales pitch before. ‘Enough gold to retire on’,” Sadie said. She’d heard it again and again from Dutch and no longer believed it from no one. “Forgive me if I ain’t buying it.”

“‘Buy’ what you like. Believe in just the money instead, if you like. I want you and your associates to come along with me on this bounty.”

“You want me to hand-deliver to you a little present for your friends the Pinkertons, huh?”

Berger chuckled. “I’m a contractor, not a Pinkerton. Not a friend of theirs either, just an occasional business partner. I have no qualms about letting some fish go so I can net a big one. Especially if the small fish help me take down the big fish. I might even be in a position to help you and your friends disappear. From Pinkerton records, at least.”

“Who’s this bounty?” Sadie hadn’t heard of any ten, twenty thousand dollar bounties. Anyone who had a bounty posted that high would probably draw hunters from all over the states. 

“A private affair, Pinkerton contractors only. A gentleman by the name of Daniel Cortone. Operates on the border to Mexico.” 

“And what’s he done?” Sadie asked skeptically. 

“Enough to deserve his bounty. The rest is unfortunately confidential. I’ll tell you any relevant details if you and your friends come with me.” 

“And if I say no?”

“Why then,” Berger said with a sharp smile, “I’m also in a position to be difficult instead of helpful. I can upgrade your status within the Agency from a little fish to a big one. Enough for me and others like me to keep you running forever. You’ll never work in the bounty business again.” 

“I don’t like threats, Mister Berger,” Sadie said coldly. 

“It isn’t a threat. Just a statement of fact.” Berger tipped his hat to her. “If you’re interested, meet me three days from now in Douglas Valley.”

#

“It’s a trap,” Arthur said as they rode out. “And I don’t like how he found us so quick.”

“Had people watching the towns? We’d just. Ride on further out. Until we cross into another state,” John suggested. 

“Or we go to Douglas Valley,” Sadie said. 

Arthur glanced at her. “It’s a trap. You want to what, kill him? That’ll bring hell and fury down from up high. Doubt he’s lying about working for the Pinkertons.” 

“Call me curious. If he’s done so much research on me that he knows who I’m running with, pretty sure between the both of you boys is a bounty big enough for Berger to be interested in. And yet he ain’t.” 

“Or he’s lying about that,” Arthur said, tired. “I’ve lost enough friends to traps. I’m inclined to agree with John. We should just leave the Plains.” 

“I’m not keen on hiding forever. If he can get me on the Pinkertons’ Wanted list? I definitely won’t be able to work bounties no more. Not here.” 

Sadie would have to leave the country, maybe. Take her chances in Canada. This sure as hell wasn’t what Sadie deserved. After all that she’d done for him and the others. “I’m real sorry about that.” 

“This thing he said about enough gold to retire on,” John said slowly. 

“Oh no. Don’t you start,” Sadie said, turning in her saddle to glare at him. 

John held up his palms. “Just saying. Berger seems to be pretty organised. I’ve heard of him myself. If _he_ thinks there’s a lot of gold to be had, it’s probably there.”

“Suuure. He’ll reel us in. Maybe he’d end up with gold and a little something extra for the Pinkertons to boot after he uses us and hands us over. While all we’d get is a hangman’s noose. Assuming that story about gold ain’t just bait to begin with,” Arthur said.

“Maybe,” Sadie said.

John looked at Sadie for a long moment. “Sadie. You really want to go to Douglas Valley? You serious?”

“For a look, at least.” Sadie squared her jaw and stared John in the eyes. Then Arthur. “Living with Dutch and the rest taught me a lot of things. Things I’m grateful for. I won’t give back that experience for the world. But it also made me tired of running.” 

“You tired of living too?” Arthur retorted.

“So what if I am?” Sadie growled. 

Arthur rocked back in his saddle, wide-eyed. “Sadie.”

“I’m not gonna swallow a gun or drink myself away, no. But so far I ain’t seen much worth in some dream of farming mangoes or ranching quietly somewhere for the rest of my days. So. Yes. I’m gonna go. To Douglas Valley. If it’s a trap, well then, at least I’d spend the last of my days—if that—killing someone who pissed me off,” Sadie said venomously. “You boys can come with me or not, whatever works for the both of you.” 

“I’m going,” John said, because of course John would go. Arthur passed a hand slowly over his face. “Like you said. I owe you.”

“Not for something like this,” Sadie said. She pursed her lips. “I was joking about you owing me. We don’t owe each other nothing but friendship.”

“So I’ll go, because of friendship. Ain’t nothing worth more to me now than that,” John said. 

Arthur exhaled. “Fine. I’ll go. Suppose I’d already have drunk myself into a shallow grave by now if it ain’t for you.” Even if this did turn out to be a trap, maybe if Arthur was there it wouldn’t be so bad. If Sadie and John could get away. Something. “But I don’t like it.” 

“You don’t have to like it.” Sadie turned her horse to the east. “Douglas Valley’s two days’ hard riding from here. If we can get there early we can keep an eye out. In case it really is a trap.” 

“As long as we don’t tire out the horses doing it. Might need to beat an escape,” Arthur said. He swallowed the rest of his misgivings and kept his peace. Didn’t say much even as they eventually made camp and cooked some deer that John had shot. He took the first watch as Sadie curled up in her bedroll and wasn’t surprised when John sat down beside him. 

“You should sleep,” Arthur said. He had his Lancaster cradled loosely in his arms. They’d camped in the open plains. No other option for shelter.

“I will, in a bit.” John stretched out his legs. “You really don’t like Sadie’s plan?”

“Oh, it’s just her plan now, is it? I might remember you going along with it.” 

“Eh, I got an ulterior motive,” John said, with a sharp smile. “I reckon I’d like to kick Berger in the balls a couple of times before I shoot him in the head.” 

“Tempting,” Arthur allowed, “but you’d probably piss Sadie off. If she wants Berger dead she’d want that pleasure for herself.” 

“I know. I’ll settle for watching Sadie do it.” John inched a little closer. “You mentioned Charles before. How’s he been?” 

“Fine. He’s gonna get the tribe settled up north, then he said he might head back down.” Arthur wasn’t particularly sure why. Charles had been vague when he’d mentioned it. “Something about staying with the bison.”

“There are bison in Canada.” 

“Different kinda bison maybe?” Arthur’s knowledge of animals was only intimately detailed with regards to what was edible and what tended to try and kill him. “I went hunting bison with him once. It was. Interesting.” He ended up talking to John about the hunt, about Charles’ melancholy, the poachers. 

“There is that,” John said, pensive. “There’s fewer and fewer game nowadays everywhere. Civilisation’s winning out. Someday, maybe in a hundred years, all this will be one big city and there’d be no more deer or bison.” 

Arthur could see that. People spreading over the land, a blight on the world. Making the air over even the Plains as foul as it was in Saint Denis, the water as choked. Humanity always changed what it could to suit its purposes and despoiled whatever it could not change. “It ain’t all too bad.” 

“Yeah? Never thought I’d hear that from you.” 

“Lawless lands are good for people like you and me. Bad for a whole lot of other people. Anyone who ain’t quick with a gun, anyone who don't own a fast horse. I seen people suffering out here in ways that wouldn’t happen in a city.”

“And I seen suffering that happens in cities that don’t happen out in the wild,” John countered. “I don’t think it’s wilderness or the lack of that’s the problem. It’s people. People are assholes.” 

Arthur inclined his head. “There is that. And it’s easier for some of us than it is for others.” 

John laughed hoarsely. “Oh yeah. This world, it’s kinder to men who like women and women who like men, and everyone else can change or hang as far as it’s concerned. It’s less kind to anyone who ain’t born a man in a man’s body. And hella less kind to coloured people. List goes on.” 

“Lot kinder to a big man with a gun,” Arthur said. That much had always been clear to him. And Dutch. 

“You are that.” John rolled a cigarette with luxurious care. He offered it to Arthur. Arthur shook his head and watched the dark as John lit up. 

“Shouldn’t you be getting some rest?” Arthur asked. 

“In a bit.” John took in a slow drag of the cigarette. “The thing that Sadie said. About being tired of living. I guess I got that way too. After I left Canada. Some days it sure felt like I was just living out of habit. Everyone I knew was gone and the people who were left didn’t need me.”

Arthur swallowed his instinctive remark about Abigail and Jack. “Know how that feels.” John glanced over at Sadie. Her breathing had evened out, and she was making little snores. “She’s asleep,” Arthur said. 

“I wanna help her.” 

Arthur chuckled. “Sadie Adler don’t need saving. She can save herself.”

“I didn’t say ‘save’. I just. Nevermind.” 

“Nah. Guess I know what you mean.” Bounty hunting was a hard life. More power to the people who liked it and thrived. Less to those who did it because they were left with little choice. Arthur still wasn’t rightly sure which of those people Sadie was. “We should stick with her. For as long as it matters.” 

“Yeah.” John relaxed. “We should.” 

Was that relief? “Why, you think I was gonna run off?”

“Well no, but. We’ve run with Dutch for a long time. All those years, the moment there was a chance to run off somewhere on your own, you’d take it. You always came back after a few days with something for the stewpot, but. You always seemed like you preferred your own company.” 

“I’m not gonna run off,” Arthur said, a little annoyed at the suggestion. “I know Sadie needs me right now. And yeah. I owe her.” 

John nodded, smoking. “Right then.”


	4. Chapter 4

Riding up to Douglas Valley in plain sight was maybe a little reckless, but Sadie hadn’t gotten what she’d wanted out of life by playing safe. She’d stopped at the mouth of the valley with Arthur at her side and John hopefully hidden somewhere safe up and out of sight. It wasn’t much of a valley, more of a space between two crags that’d been sculpted into gentle thumbs by the weather. Berger’s camp was in the shadow of the bigger crag, a smaller team than the one that’d gone after John.

“Them’s different men,” Arthur said quietly, lowering his binoculars. 

“Not Berger’s?”

“Don’t know if they’re Berger’s or not, but they ain’t the same people we saw before. I count seven men.” 

Sadie sucked on her teeth. All in all, it’d be pretty damned funny if some random outlaw gang or whatever it was had chanced on Berger and murdered him already. God didn’t often conspire to make Sadie’s life easy though. As He proved to her right quick—a man in a green vest and a rifle that caught the sun was getting onto his horse and riding over. 

Fucking Berger. 

She’d probably said that out loud. Arthur’s mouth twisted into a brief smirk. He was slouched loosely in his saddle, eyes shaded by his hat and his hands set over his pommel. The bored look was deceptive, though. Arthur’s hands were near enough his gun, and when Arthur had a gun in his grip he could fight like a demon. 

“Mrs Adler,” Berger said. He stopped at a polite distance. “Only one friend?”

“I didn’t think the size of my social circle concerned you, Mister Berger,” Sadie said. 

Berger glanced up, following the ridges of the crags. Must’ve spotted John, or made an educated guess. He smiled thinly. “You seem to have a rather complete insurance policy.”

“Helps to be prepared,” Sadie said, unable to help her disdain. “Being a little lady in the big scary world of bounty hunters and all.” 

“Your friend isn’t so little,” Berger said. 

Sadie inclined her head. “Yeah well, I don’t hold that against him.” 

“I have an additional piece of goodwill, freely given,” Berger said. He looked real relaxed for someone who knew he was within rifle sights. “Micah Bell was last seen holed up in Fairwater. There’s a forest thereabouts, a dense one. If you follow the river up until you get to a waterfall, you’ll find him in the caves behind the falls. He’s been there for a while. Expecting to winter there, I believe.” 

Sadie narrowed her eyes. “No love lost between Pinkerton contractors?” 

“I confess I’m none too fond of folk like Mister Bell,” Berger said, his hand tightening briefly on his pommel. “Men like him are the reason I got into this business in the first place.”

“A business that you’d now like to retire out of.”

“I’d like the _option_ of retiring out of it, yes. Perhaps after this, perhaps later, when I’m older and more inclined to remember Paris fondly. I’d sail home and buy a nice estate somewhere with a vineyard.” 

“Ain’t we all got fine dreams.” Sadie studied Berger carefully. Tried not to feel too excited. The Micah tip might’ve gone cold by the time she was done here. Or it could be a trap in itself. “All right, Mister Berger. My friends and I will ride with you for now. For a fair share of the gold and the bounty on your mystery contract. And for a favour at the end when all’s said and done.” 

She’d asked for more than what she thought Berger would be willing to give and fully expected him to haggle. Instead, he tipped his hat. “That you will get. If we survive. Now is your friend up there coming down to join us for supper or not?”

“My friends can do what they like.” Sadie nudged Missy forward and Arthur kept pace just behind her. 

They set up their tents on the edge of Berger’s camp and hitched up their horses as Berger had a quiet word with one of his men. Sadie studied the group with a practiced eye. Gunslingers to a hair, judging from the hardware and the swagger. Mixed bunch, nearly as misfit as Dutch’s. There was a handsome black man in a gray coat and vest who’d glanced at her and Arthur and nodded before turning back to something he was whittling. A slender Chinese man in a black waistcoat and scarf by the fire, ostensibly staring into it. Pair of blonde twins, tall as trees. A short, squat man with a sunburnt face, who’d paused in the middle of playing the harmonica when they’d approached. And a tall man in black with a grizzled beard and lanky dark hair who was talking to Berger. 

Berger walked over to the fire, clapping his hands. “Introductions all round, I suppose. This is Mrs—”

“I can speak for myself. Sadie Adler, that’s my name,” Sadie said. 

“Arthur Callahan,” Arthur said gruffly. 

Berger smiled. “Abraham Berger is my name, though I’m known to all and sundry here. My friends are Roland Briar—” the black man inclined his head, “—Lee, Travis and Jacob Hammer, Sam Hobbs with the harmonica, and John Foster.” Grizzled beard tipped his hat. 

“You seem to have changed all your friends, Mister Berger,” Sadie said brightly. 

“I use foxhounds for a fox and wolfhounds for a wolf.” Berger made a show of looking around. “We might have another friend coming by, I believe? One of yours?” 

“Might be,” Sadie said. She’d asked John to use his judgment. “He’s shy.” 

Berger stared at Arthur appraisingly. He knew damned well who Arthur was, obviously. “Count me surprised, Mister… Callahan. I heard that you were deathly ill. With the emphasis on ‘deathly’.”

“Got over it,” Arthur said. His jaw tensed. 

“Pleasantly surprised, then,” Berger said.

“Why, what was you hoping for eh?” Sadie asked. The camp had pretty good cover if it came down to shooting. She could dive behind the nearest crate. 

“I was counting on any of the more… senior associates of our mutual friend,” Berger said, with an easy smile. “Mister Callahan is in fact better than what I was hoping for.” 

Sweat prickled down Sadie’s back, even as Arthur grunted and sat down on a crate. “Yeah? We don’t keep mutual friends with Pinkerton whores.” 

The Hammer brothers didn’t even blink. Foster scowled. Hobbs glanced between Berger and Arthur, Lee looked away and over at the dark crags. Briar laughed. Berger shot him a brief warning glance and forced a smile. “Oldest profession in the world. I don’t have anything against it. Make yourselves comfortable. We ride out at first light.” Berger cut away across the camp to his tent. 

No movement out against the rock. John was out for a cold night on the crag. Sadie felt better about the situation with John watching, even if Berger obviously knew John was there. They ate from the group stewpot, which wasn’t so bad. Arthur went to sleep first—he’d be awake later to keep an eye on the camp, just in case. Sadie sat on a crate and cleaned her pistols. Foster was posting watch near the horses. Near everyone else had turned in. Only Briar was watching her and Arthur. 

“I do believe I’ve heard of you, Mrs Adler,” Briar said as he whittled away. “Lady in the bounty hunting business ranging New Austin and the Great Plains. You caught Clearwater and Maxwell.”

“Caught Knapp too, but your boss stole him off me,” Sadie said flatly. 

Briar inclined his head. “I concede that he is technically my current employer by definition. As he is yours. But he isn’t my boss.” 

“You get blackmailed into this gig too?” Sadie asked, curious. Briar didn’t look like the sort who could get shifted easy. Though then again, neither was Arthur, and here he was kipping down beside her. 

Briar chuckled. “No. We have a mutual interest in Cortone. Blackmail, you say.” His amusement faded. “Against a lady, why, that isn’t very moral of Mister Berger.” 

“Mister Berger is real charming,” Sadie said, with as much poisonous contempt as she could muster. “You don’t sound like you’re from these parts.” 

“I’m not. Nor would I normally be found around ‘these parts’ save where truly necessary,” Briar said delicately. “A curious number of people this far south appear to consider the Second Amendment applicable only to white folk, be as it may that it was adopted over a hundred years ago with no colour stipulated in its language.” At Sadie’s blank stare, Briar explained, “A black man who wears a gun here is a black man who’s ‘asking’ to get himself shot. Or lynched. And I doubt that state of affairs will change in this part of the world for a long time yet.” 

Sadie nodded. She’d heard Lenny say as much before. And look what had happened to him. “Cortone must’ve been a real powerful draw for you then.” 

“The strongest. Some days I do believe he’s the Devil himself.”

Any real hope Sadie had of maybe turning Briar to her side—or neutral—faded quickly. Whatever had driven Briar here sure didn’t sound entirely rational. He’d said that with a strange sort of joyous calm, with a preacher’s intensity. “You’re a God-fearing man then, Mister Briar.”

“Ain’t we all, Mrs Adler? Ain’t we all.” Briar flashed her a brilliant smile.

#

At Arthur’s signal, John rode up to the group as they packed down the camp in the morning and was introduced to all and sundry as ‘John Callahan’. Nevermind that he looked nothing like Arthur. Strange bunch. Berger greeted him with a decidedly French air of ironic amusement. He rode up front with everyone else in a loose fan behind them.

“We’re headed towards Fort Blake, I think,” Arthur guessed. 

“Exactly right,” Berger said from the front. “I have a man waiting for me there with more information about Cortone’s exact whereabouts.”

“So what exactly did this Cortone guy do again?” Sadie asked, taking her horse briefly up level beside Berger. “You ain’t been generous with the details. And I sure ain’t heard of nobody with a bounty higher than five thousand.” 

“Watch yourself, woman,” Jacob Hammer said sharply. 

“Now, now. Be polite. We’re all friends here, for the time being,” Berger said. He turned to Sadie. “Cortone is, among many things, a slaver, a trafficker of women and children, a murderer, and a thief.” 

“Charming feller by the sound of it,” Sadie said, “but that don’t hardly run up a ‘big fish’ bounty, does it?” 

“No, it doesn’t. Though his various other crimes are the reason behind the presence of some of our current companions, a few of whom aren’t entirely swayed by the promise of fortune,” Berger said. He glanced over his shoulder at Briar, who smiled faintly at them both.

“Sounds like the kinda guy some people would like to shoot just on principle,” John said. Dutch would’ve… well. Years ago, John would’ve unhesitatingly confirmed that Cortone was the sort of person Dutch would ride out to shoot. Now he knew better about Dutch and his principles.

“What he did do to summon his particular bounty was in fact plain old American Capitalism,” Berger said, with a grand gesture towards the rolling grass. “Some time ago Mister Cortone saw an opportunity in the opiate market and cornered it, becoming a wholesale supplier for large swathes of this part of the country. Morphine, for wealthier patients, opium or heroin for others.” 

“That’s all legal,” John said. 

“In some states, only if you have a prescription. Mister Cortone is not particularly concerned whether someone has one as such. More importantly, in a somewhat recent attempt to meet burgeoning demand in and around Boston, Mister Cortone watered down his ‘laundry shop’ supply, shall we say, by bulking it up with additives. Some of these additives turned out to be lethal. Not the biggest of concerns to the law by any means, except that it happened to kill a couple of wealthy young heirs who’d been ’slumming it’ for fun. It was a terrible death, by all accounts. So here we are.” Berger patted his horse, a gleaming black Arabian.

“And the gold?” Sadie asked. 

“Mister Cortone is said not to place much faith in paper currency, seeing it as a long-standing hallucination of the masses,” Berger said. He chuckled. “Being French, I’m inclined to agree. There’s no other use for the dollar unless you need kindling in a pinch. Or you could wipe your ass with it, I suppose.”

“A whole ass,” Arthur muttered. Berger glanced at him, startled, but Arthur shook his head and looked away. 

“So he sits on gold instead?” Sadie frowned to herself. “Ain’t gold’s value also a long-standing hallucination by that logic? You can’t do much with it neither. It’s a soft metal and it can’t be eaten.” 

“I never really expect members of the criminal class to be particularly logical.” Berger offered her a vulpine smile. “Why, for example, would desperate men keen on laying low after a bad job gone wrong rob more banks, including a city one, as well as set fire to a mansion belonging to a wealthy landowner of good standing?”

“Why, I can’t imagine anyone doing such a _terrible_ thing,” Sadie said, putting forward the fakest impression of innocence John ever did see. He couldn’t help his laugh, which ran the smile right off Berger’s face. Sadie smirked, ignoring Arthur’s glower. 

They took a break when Foster shot a deer. John wasn’t picky about what he ate, especially nowadays. They cut strips off the carcass and roasted it over the campfire. Berger produced some salt and Lee shared around some pepper. Arthur pointedly sat off to a side and John sat with him, watching Sadie wander over to talk to Foster. Cold as the man appeared to be, ingrained politeness at least appeared to incline him towards nominal conversation.

“What d’you think so far?” John murmured. 

Arthur sniffed. “Think we’re gonna have to watch our backs all the way there and back,” he said in the same low tone.

“Sadie thinks Berger wants Dutch.” 

“Don’t everyone? Think Dutch’s bounty set something of a recent record. Ain’t nobody been worth that much for a while but Jesse James, I don’t think.” 

“You sound actually proud of that,” John said accusingly.

“A long time ago I might of been,” Arthur said. He finished eating the chunk of venison he had speared on his knife and put it away. “Now I knows better. There ain’t no escaping that kinda bounty.” 

John fell silent. He had a fairly big bounty on himself, him and Arthur. Arthur’s was larger, of course. He’d been at the business longer, feared for longer. Bounty size had once been a source of pride for them all. A measure of the price civilisation had put up to reject them, Dutch had called it. Felt meaningless now compared to simpler things. Like the solid reality of Arthur, sitting right there beside him. John ate slowly, breathed slowly. If he could stretch time out now he would, dangerous as it felt making camp with a Pinkerton-contracted bounty hunter. He could smell Arthur this close, trail dust and horseflesh, masculine sweat and leather. It was heady and intimate and was a heist in its own way, John reaping the benefits sweetened by risk. 

Arthur had been in all his fantasies for years. If John had to count back to the start of everything, he wouldn’t even be able to pin down when it all started. He’d been an angry boy pulled into a gang of angry and dangerous people, some of whom had been incidentally kind. Arthur had been one of the kinder ones. For years John had thought his increasingly guilty fixation on Arthur had been because he’d wanted to _be_ Arthur. Completely trusted by Dutch and Hosea. Someone who could get shit done, outfight anything, outshoot everyone. 

It’d been Abigail who’d seen it. She’d been teasing him on the way into a town, both of them sent in by Hosea to scope out a bank. “I pray I’d find a man who’d love me as much as you love Arthur,” she said, laughing in response to some joke John had made that he no longer rightly remembered. “You’re always ‘Arthur this’, ‘Arthur that’.” Her words had hit him like a thunderbolt. 

Arthur nudged his foot. “John.” 

John blinked. “Sorry. Was miles away.”

“Yeah, I noticed. Go see what Sadie wants.” 

John looked up. Sadie was beckoning at them. He finished his venison and ambled over. “Like I was saying,” Sadie told Foster, “my friend John here plays a fair hand of poker.” 

“But not your other friend?” Foster asked. He was notably more friendly. John was a little surprised. Maybe Sadie had some charm in her that she’d kept hidden to date. 

“Naw, he needs his rest. Small buy, thanking you kindly. We ain’t all of us big time bounty hunters,” Sadie said, with a playful little laugh.

What was Sadie up to? John just nodded. Foster pulled Hobbs and the other Hammer brother into the game, which they played with the cards spread on a bedroll. Travis, his name was. Berger had gone to sleep. Looked safe enough. They played a few hands. Foster was good. No visible tells. On the fifth time that the game came down to the two of them, Foster smiled as Travis called it quits. The smile was a hungry gash of a thing, cut across his mouth. “You’ve got pretty good nerves,” Foster told John. 

“Comes with the territory.” John had a half decent hand and he was fairly sure it was better than Foster’s. Key to winning a game was to have his opponent start second-guessing himself though. Looked like Foster’s nerve was just as good. “You’re good. Lucky we’re playing for peanuts.” 

Foster’s smile widened. Now John recognised his hunger for what it was. Gambler’s fever. “Wanna up the stakes?” Foster asked.

John watched Sadie through the corner of his eye and caught the tiniest little head shake. “Maybe when we get to know each other better,” John said. He check-raised his hand. “Gonna be a bit of a ride to the fort and onwards to wherever Cortone is, ain’t it?”

“Richer bets ain’t much for me,” Hobbs said. He had a fussy little voice. 

“I’m sure we can deal with that disappointment,” Foster said, without even looking at him. “It’s not often that I meet a great poker player.” 

“You flatter me, sir,” John said, though he’d cut his teeth on dollar buy games in camp when he’d been all of twelve years old. Moved on to rustle bigger games as he got older, on tables where people would underestimate him because of his age. Before he’d gotten old and big enough to shoot a rifle without the knockback kicking him sideways. “Does Mister Berger play?” 

Foster frowned as he met John’s raise. “No. Why?”

“You guys been riding together long?” John asked. At John’s next check-raise, Foster folded. 

“About six, seven years now,” Foster said, unruffled by the small loss. 

“Long time.” John whistled. “What about you, Hobbs?” 

“Naw, not me. Usually, I do my own thing. Prefer the quiet. No offense, ma’am,” Hobbs said. He was starting to look bored. 

“None taken, sir,” Sadie said, though her lip twisted briefly in irritation. 

“I’ve been on a couple of jobs with Mister Berger. He’s fair and pays well. Even for a Frenchman.” Hobbs stifled a yawn. 

Foster didn’t even blink. Not that much love lost then. Or maybe he’d been told by Berger not to start trouble on his account. “What about everyone else?” Sadie asked. “It’s a pretty unusual group we have here.” 

“That it is. It’s always an unusual group with Mister Berger—” Hobbs flinched under Foster's sudden glare. “I mean, uh. It’s a rare man who has got no prejudices.”

“You can say that again, Mister Hobbs,” Sadie said, with a sweet smile that looked out of place on her face. “Another game, gentlemen?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes:  
> Bounties in the Wild West weren’t usually higher than $5,000—Jesse James was $5,000 reward with an additional $5,000 for conviction. Apparently, most bounties were around $150. Looking at some wanted posters I think Butch Cassidy definitely had a bigger bounty but I feel like Dutch and his gang are sort of based on or pretty close to Butch and the Wild Bunch (if less successful and more of a trash fire) so… no Wild Bunch in this ‘verse.  
> https://www.history.com/news/jesse-james-wanted-poster-goes-up-for-auction
> 
> On trafficking in the 1900s and US vs Ah Sou: https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com.au/&httpsredir=1&article=1732&context=cilj
> 
> 19th Century opiates: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/inside-story-americas-19th-century-opiate-addiction-180967673/


	5. Chapter 5

Fort Blake wasn’t as big as Wallace, more of an outpost than a fort. Looking at it Arthur wasn’t rightly sure what the point of its existence was. It was perched on a squat rocky plateau, overseeing a shallow river crossing. The soldiers inside looked like they were used to boredom, a slouching bunch with rumpled uniforms. Arthur idly wondered what Captain Monroe would’ve made of them and took to wondering what the man was up to now. Safe and hiding somewhere, he hoped. The army shot deserters, even if the deserting hadn’t been entirely voluntary.

Arthur had been tense coming into the fort, half-convinced that they were about to be clapped in irons once within and sent off to the gallows. Instead, they’d been shown the stables. Arthur took his time brushing Buell down. John had followed Sadie over to the tent in the centre of the fort, where Berger was meeting his contact. Whoever that was. Arthur kept an eye on the rest. Being around this many armed men made the skin between his shoulder blades itch. 

“Fine horse.” 

Arthur looked over. To his surprise, it was Lee who’d spoken. The Chinese man had said not a word since Arthur and Sadie had walked into the camp. Arthur had assumed that he was either mute or conscious of his English. “Thank you, sir,” Arthur said. 

“No accent.”

“What did you say?” Arthur blinked.

“That’s what you’re thinking. ‘No accent’.” Lee smiled, a tight and sharp little smile. The man wasn’t tall, coming up to Arthur’s shoulder at best. “Isn’t normal.”

“Not really,” Arthur said. He finished brushing Buell and put the curry comb away. “I’ve always ridden with people who don’t fit what others might rightly call ‘normal’. So I don’t think much on such things.” 

That got him a long, appraising stare. “You look more like an outlaw than a bounty hunter,” Lee said. He was taking his time on his own horse, a silver dapple mustang. 

“That so? Does Mister Berger tend to ride with outlaws, then?” Arthur asked. He leaned a shoulder against Buell’s stall door. 

“He has before.”

“Sounds like you ride with him often.” 

“Now and then,” Lee said, feeding his horse a carrot. “Mister Berger doesn’t much care about what colour his hired guns are, as long as they shoot straight.” 

“Rightly so,” Arthur said. People in Dutch’s gang who cared otherwise quickly learned the error of their ways or were forced to leave. “I ain’t seen many Chinese bounty hunters.” 

Lee shook his head. “I was born here. I’m as American as you are, Mister Callahan. Though they did only recently affirm as such in Court.” 

“That why you don’t wear a… a—” Arthur made a gesture towards the back of his head.

“A queue? No.” Lee let himself out of the stall, tipped his hat, and walked away. Arthur watched him go. He wasn’t sure if he’d said something to piss the man off. Hopefully not. Looked like Sadie’s strategy, for now, was some kinda mixed charm offensive, and Arthur didn’t really want to mess that up. 

He was patting Buell when John found him. “There you are,” John said, striding over. “What’re you doing hiding in here?”

“Do I look like I’m hiding?” Arthur tickled Buell behind his ears. “Sadie all right?”

“She’s fine. We got cut out of Berger’s meeting so she’s having another crack at Briar. That guy’s some kinda gunslinger preacher or something? Strange world.” John leaned against the stall door beside Arthur. He reached for Buell, which snorted loudly but allowed a pat. “Every time I see this horse I’m kinda surprised he’s real. That pelt. Brighter than gold.” 

“He’s worth more than gold to me,” Arthur said, affectionately patting Buell’s nose. “Ain’t you, boy.” 

“You seriously love all your horses,” John said. There was something odd in his tone, a faint catch. 

“Yeah, ‘course. They knows it when you do. Helps the bond. If I whistled outside for Buell, he’d kick down this door to get to me.” Probably bowl over anyone too slow to get out of his way at that. 

“Don’t know if Old Boy would’ve done that for me,” John said. He looked over his shoulder towards his current horse, a young black thoroughbred mare with white socks. “Not sure if Rachel here would neither.” 

“I’m inclined to blame the master and not the horse,” Arthur said. He smirked as John growled and playfully shoved at him, the way he would’ve when they were younger. Before John had run off for a year and returned, before the rift had torn open between them. Arthur pushed him back, grinning. They were grown men now, but John laughed and made a show of ducking out of reach. 

“Too slow, old man.”

“Oh, _I’m_ old now, am I?” 

“Don’t rightly know,” John said, stepping quickly out of reach again as Arthur started for him. “I try to make it a policy not to pick on the elderly and infirm.” 

“I’ll give you ‘elderly and infirm’,” Arthur growled. He feinted left, and as John tried to slip out of reach again, Arthur pounced. Buell snorted loudly as Arthur shoved John up against what he’d thought was a latched stall door, only for the door to swing open and send them sprawling into the hay. Fresh, thankfully. Arthur spat out straw as John squirmed under him and started to laugh, swatting at Arthur as Arthur pretended to strangle him. 

“Let up, goddamnit,” John said, grinning as he tried to worm out. Straw was sticking in his hair, and his hat had bowled off to a corner of the stall. “Jesus, you’re one heavy bastard.”

“First I’d like to hear an apology.” 

“What for? I was just stating a fact. C’mon. Gerroff.” John pushed at Arthur’s chest. Arthur opened his mouth to say something and tensed as he heard faint footsteps beyond. Stopping outside the stall beyond Buell. He clapped his hand over John’s mouth and ignored John’s irritated glare. 

“Now where’d those Callahan boys get to?” Travis Hammer asked. 

“Wherever they are, they ain’t in here. Probably getting a drink at the mess tent. Like we should be,” Jacob Hammer said and spat. “I think the Frenchman’s finally lost his fucking mind. _This_ is all the men we’re bringing to take on Cortone? You’d need a goddamned army to winkle him out of Dead Man’s Pass, if that’s where he is.” 

Dead Man’s Pass? Shit. Arthur tensed. Against him, John narrowed his eyes. 

“He’s done right by us on other hunts before,” Travis said, “but I’m inclined to agree. Which makes me think that maybe Cortone ain’t really what he’s gunning for.”

“Yeah? We sure are headed in his direction. With Pinkerton scouts sent ahead of us to boot.” 

“Didn’t you notice anything about John Callahan?” 

Beneath Arthur, John pushed Arthur’s hand off his mouth. Arthur crouched lower in the straw as one of the brothers started to pace. “What about him?” Travis asked. 

“Those big scars on his face. Think I’ve seen them before. On a Wanted poster.” 

Jacob grunted. “That don’t mean nothing. Hell, I’ve seen _Hobbs’_ ugly mug on a Wanted poster. Wasn’t for much, though.” 

“Pretty sure there were more zeroes on Callahan’s poster than on Hobbs’. I wouldn’t remember it otherwise.” 

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying either Berger’s plan has got something to do with the Callahans, or he’s actually headed for Cortone. If it _is_ Cortone, it’s a suicide mission and a half. We should call it quits.” 

Jacob made an incredulous noise. “What about the gold?”

“Fuck the gold. We’ll die before we can touch it.” 

“I’ve got to think on this,” Jacob said, doubtful. “Let’s just wait and see whether we head for the Pass.” 

Footsteps. The brothers were moving off. Once Arthur couldn’t hear them anymore, he whispered, “You and your goddamned _face_.”

“Can’t rightly help it can I?” John started to tremble with silent laughter. “C’mon, you heavy bastard. Get off.” 

“You gonna make me?” 

“Sure I’ll make you.” 

“You and what army, Marston?” As Arthur smirked and reached down to pin and tickle John, the way he’d had when they’d been boys, John leaned up and pecked him on the mouth. 

Arthur stared, shocked. John blinked at him, his grin fading into an awkward flush. “Ah… thought that might get you to leave off. Guess not.” John looked away and up at the ceiling. “Uh. Are you gonna get off me now or what?” 

Arthur eased off and sat on the straw. “John.”

“That… was a joke,” John mumbled. 

“Yeah?” Arthur said. John was fidgeting now, his gaze darting everywhere. John was _afraid_. Arthur could only stare some more. He’d never seen John afraid before. Even when they’d been run up a mountain by a small army of Pinkertons with nowhere to hide. What was he afraid of? Arthur?

“Yeah,” John said, in a louder voice. “What else could it be?”

“Don’t rightly know, John. I mean, it ain’t exactly the first time I’ve been kissed by a man.” Arthur hadn’t actually meant to say that, but it’d slipped out anyway. 

John’s gaze snapped up to his, furious. “Seriously?” 

Startled by John’s sudden anger, Arthur said, “Some French artist in Saint Denis. Funny guy. Helped him get on a ship out of the city. Think he was headed for Tahiti. Might even have gotten there.” 

“Wait, what? You and a French guy? I thought you was in Saint Denis to see _Mary_. Whenever you was there. This guy really good looking or something?” John growled. No, he wasn’t angry. He was jealous. Arthur blinked slowly. Felt like time was catching up to him all at once, dragging understanding to the fore. He let out a startled laugh and John glowered at him as he started to get to his feet.

“It was actually more of an act. Long story. Sit _down_ , or I’ll make you sit.” Arthur nudged his foot pointedly against John’s ankle. “Jesus, John. I never figured.”

John sat. He was silent for a long time, then he said, in a small voice, “Yeah, well. Not like I could easily tell you could I? Especially since you acted like you hated me. After I came back.”

“I could never hate you. Hell, I can’t even hate Dutch. I’ve loved the whole sorry lot of you for so goddamned long that I don’t rightly know how to have it any other way.” That probably summed up the total of Arthur’s poor life decisions post-Blackwater. Maybe all of his poor decisions for a while before that. 

“Yeah?” John seemed to recover a little of his fey humour. “Even Bill?”

Arthur shuddered. “Okay, fine. Bill’s a bit of a difficult one. Some days, sure.”

John grinned. “Even… Micah?”

“Not him. Christ. Even thinking about Micah gives me a goddamned headache nowadays.” 

“Yeah, I get that.” John got to his feet and hauled Arthur up to his. As they dusted off straw, John said cautiously, “We good?”

“Why wouldn’t we be?” Arthur said, in as friendly a tone as he could manage. John nodded slowly and picked up his hat. As he started for the stall door, a stray thought had Arthur ask, “How long?”

“How long what?” John turned, wary again.

“Since. What you felt. About me.” 

“Oh.” John bit out a harsh laugh and pushed out of the stall. “For as long as I can remember, Morgan. I don’t rightly know how to have it any other way.”

#

Berger’s Pinkerton scout was really another contractor, a stocky man of indeterminate heritage who walked like a cat. Something about him turned the eye—Martin had a way of just quietly fading into the background. “Best scout I know,” Berger said, when he’d introduced Martin to Sadie and John. He’d ride out with them a day, apparently, after which he was ‘engaged elsewhere’.

Sadie found Martin squirreled away on the stone ramparts of the small fort, staring out into the night. He didn’t look over at her as she leaned against the stone beside him. “Never seen Mister Berger ride with a woman,” Martin said. 

He had a strange accent, or lack of. It felt like many accents carefully stitched into one, placing Martin from nowhere. He was barely Sadie’s height, with short-cut black hair and a thin mustache, a round brown face and warm hazel eyes. He was dressed in a discoloured old blue shirt and gray riding jeans. Wasn’t visibly armed. 

“First time for everything I guess,” Sadie said. 

“You want something?” Martin asked. He turned his head at the sound of a shout of laughter from within the fort, where a table had been dragged up next to a couple of lanterns. John, Foster, the Hammer brothers, and a couple of the officers were playing poker. “Your friend’s a professional.”

“A what?” 

“Poker player. A professional hustler.” 

“He plays a good game,” Sadie said carefully.

“I know the look. Some people make a fine living out of it. Bloodless way to do it. Generally speaking.”

“John’s a man of many talents,” Sadie said. She could imagine that. Being a professional poker player. There’d been some riverboat plan of Trelawny’s involving high stakes poker and a crooked dealer, one that had as usual gone sideways near the end. That seemed to be a common part of any Van der Linde plan. Things going spectacularly awry at the very last moment. 

Well. It wouldn’t be the case for an Adler plan. She’d make sure of it. Sadie knew how to make the best of a bad hand. She’d been doing it all her life. 

“No doubt,” Martin said. He looked back over the dark plain. “Not a bad call. Having him play poker with Foster. Game’s the only thing that man knows how to love.” 

“Ain’t it good to make friends with your colleagues?” Sadie had thought so anyway. Moving people in the right way was all about finding the right lever. Sometimes at gunpoint. 

Martin sniffed. “Mister Berger doesn’t have colleagues. Not on these kinds of jobs. He has business partners. People who’d have the same stake as he does in the reward. Or so he’d tell you.” 

“Yeah? Something I should know about this job other than the bounty and the gold?”

Martin glanced at her, his expression unreadable, then he grunted and looked away. “I knew it.”

“Knew what?” 

“Why are you here, Mrs Adler?” 

“Bounty and the gold,” Sadie said. 

Michael huffed. “I know the sort of people who’d be interested in hunting down big bounties and you don’t have the look of them sort. No offense.” 

“None taken. Why, what sort of people are those?”

“There's Berger, who's loco and likes the challenge. There’s Briar, driven by some strange idea of righteousness. Lee, who's in it for revenge. The Hammer brothers, who go after big bounties ‘round north. Hobbs and Foster, who always turn to bounty hunting when their addictions get the worst of them. You don’t look like any of them. Which makes it interesting.” Martin scratched at his jaw. “And you’re a woman.”

“Top marks,” Sadie said. She couldn’t swallow the sarcasm even if she’d tried. Martin smiled, though. 

“Whatever Berger has over you? You should cut your losses and leave. Don’t go where he’s going.”

“Dead Man’s Pass?”

Martin nodded. “It’s no place for a woman. Free or otherwise.” 

“I’ve been in plenty places that ain’t ‘no place for a woman’,” Sadie said, pressing down on her exasperation. “I can take care of myself. What _is_ Dead Man’s Pass?” 

“Lady, if you don’t even know that—“

“Tell me then.”

Martin exhaled. “It’s a canyon, not a pass. Warren of valleys and caves. Man can get lost in it if they ain’t careful. Can’t get through without being detected. It’s a place where outlaw gangs go to lie low. A town in and of itself. Has a ranch in there, shops, water, hell, you can even get fresh horses. If you contribute to the upkeep you can get in no questions asked.” 

“You’ve been there?” 

Martin nodded. “Snuck in. Nearly got caught on my way out.” 

“Cortone’s there?”

“He runs the place.” Martin stared at Sadie. “They’ll see you people coming. If you’re lucky, they’d shoot you dead on the way up. If you’re not, well, I’ve seen what they’ve done to women who ain’t lucky.” 

“They just shoot people on the way up? Then how’d they get any tenants? This outlaw town has got private membership or what?” 

Martin laughed, humourless. “Oh yes. It’s a very private club. Joinable only by people with bounties over two thousand and up. Those people can bring their friends, whoever they like. But ain’t nobody else getting in.” 

Arthur. Arthur had a bounty that big. _Pleasantly surprised_ , Berger had said. Sadie narrowed her eyes. “I see. Thanking you kindly for the warning then, sir.” 

“I’ve said my piece.” Martin sounded indifferent. 

Arthur was smoking near the stables, writing in his journal next to a lantern. He’d been oddly distracted all day and had brushed off one of Sadie’s previous attempts to ask him what was wrong. Arthur glanced up as Sadie approached and scooted over to make space for her on the crate. “Everything all right?” he asked absently, then frowned as Sadie leaned against his flank. “Sadie?”

“Hush, I’m thinking.” Most days Sadie felt like she could never bear human contact again, not after what the O’Driscolls had done. Some few days she still wanted it. Even something this simple. Arthur grunted and kept on writing. When he turned a page, Sadie said, “You heard of Dead Man’s Pass? Seems that’s where we’re headed.”

“Sure. Dutch considered holing up there once after a bank job. Long time ago.” 

“What happened to change his mind?”

Arthur snorted. “Pass has got rules. Enforced ceasefire where everyone minds their own business on pain of death. Hosea didn’t think that would ever work. Especially since we heard that Colm sometimes used the place.” 

Sadie spat to a side. She still saw Colm O’Driscoll’s hanging sometimes in her dreams, crystalline clear. The fear on his face before the end. She’d thought she was willing to die right after, which was why she’d pulled the trigger on the man she’d had in a chokehold instead of waiting for Dutch’s say-so. Somehow Dutch and Arthur had gotten her out anyway alive. Neither of them had said a word about what she’d done. Dutch had even tried to say a few kind words to her as they’d ridden back to camp. Last dregs of his capacity for kindness, maybe.

“Think Berger’s gonna try to get in there by hiding us all behind you,” Sadie said. She told Arthur about Martin’s comment about the ‘private club’. 

Arthur kept on writing. “I figured.” 

Annoyed, Sadie glanced at him. “Why didn’t you say something? Instead of leaving me to spin my wheels?” 

“Because…” Arthur trailed off. “I was gonna talk to Berger tomorrow. About his plan. Try and figure out if he’s really after Cortone.” 

“Hell of an act to drag us all the way here and not go after Cortone,” Sadie said. 

“If he is, and his plan is to get into Dead Man’s Pass on account of ‘hiding behind me’? Sure. But I’m gonna get him to agree to let you go first. And John, if that’s possible.” 

“Oh, come _on_. That’s bullshit.” 

“It’ll be—”

Sadie scowled. “Dangerous? So fucking what. Jesus, Arthur. You think my life isn’t dangerous? That I don’t know the stakes? Far as I see it, you boys was dragged into this mess because of me. I’m gonna get us out of it. And I’d thank you kindly to respect and trust me to do it. ‘Sides, I seriously doubt Berger’s gonna let me go that easily. Or John.” 

Arthur blew out a sigh. “Suppose not.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes:  
> http://www.cetel.org/timeline.html in particular http://www.cetel.org/1898_wongkim.html, the case of United States vs Wong Kim Ark: a child born in the USA to parents of Chinese descent is considered a citizen by birth as at 1898. 
> 
> Dead Man’s Pass is very loosely based on https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/hole-in-the-wall-outlaw-hideout


	6. Chapter 6

They rode out at first light. Arthur and Berger had some sort of quiet discussion in the stables, one that everyone else had been shut out of. Sadie had been pissed about that, but Foster wouldn’t budge from outside the stables and there’d been too many armed folk around to make a scene. John had dragged her off to have breakfast. Arthur stayed quiet until they saddled up and headed out, refusing to answer any questions. 

Martin was riding with them, up front with Berger. Everyone else was fanned out loosely. They’d left the trail behind an hour ago. It was a vast land that was left around them, still wild. The horizon was stepped with distant brown peaks. John wondered if the gang could’ve hidden out here. Or somewhere like here. Somewhere bleak enough still to be wild. Tried to eke out a living as ranchers. Dutch’s dream, fully realized in poverty and humble living.

“What were you and Berger talking about?” Sadie asked Arthur. 

“Business,” Arthur said curtly. He relented when Sadie glared at him. “You was right. Happy? On all counts.” 

“Satisfied, not happy.” Sadie ignored John’s questioning stare. 

Arthur nodded tightly. Didn’t look inclined to talk. John didn’t mind. He’d gone days without talking to a single soul before and never felt like he was lonely. ‘Sides, he wasn’t good at talking, especially when it came to people who mattered to him. John tended to either say too much or say the wrong thing. He’d definitely said too much in the stables. Arthur hadn’t mentioned it since, like he’d forgotten. John knew better than to hope for that, but quiet he could handle. He’d handled that for years. 

Foster ended up falling back to talk to him anyway. They talked shop. Poker games. Man had a demon on his shoulder and it was his card addiction. Big stakes games on riverboats, that was his favourite drug. “Makes you feel alive,” Foster said, “when you gamble everything.” 

“I guess,” John said. He played poker because he’d been told to. He liked it fine, but he liked many things fine enough without getting to the point where they rode him instead of the other way around. Sadie shot him a warning stare. “I never been in one of them riverboat games. What’s it like?” 

“You’re good enough to play in any one of them,” Foster said generously, “but you’d have to look the part. Fine clothes, that kinda thing. And I don’t mean to be unkind, but those are some serious scars you’re wearing on your face.” 

“Should’a seen what happened to the wolf.” John didn’t remember much of that. He’d been feverish and convinced he was going to die. Hiding in the snow hadn’t been the greatest of ideas. He’d had Javier to thank for his rescue more than Arthur, who by all accounts hadn’t wanted to look for him at all. That had hurt more than the wounds. “Probably would’a died. Wasn’t smart getting lost in the snow. A… a friend of mine begged people to help look for me.” 

“Good friend, that one. A keeper,” Foster said. “I don’t much like wolves myself. Beautiful animals though.” 

A keeper. John had thought so for a while. He’d tried. He’d figured that it was what Arthur wanted, mistaken as Arthur was about Jack’s parentage. Besides, John knew he owed her. Abigail had saved his skin at least twice. On the mountains, when she’d pretty much harangued Dutch, Javier, and Arthur into looking for him, according to Tilly. Later when he’d been incarcerated and slated to hang, when she’d talked Sadie into staging a rescue. Arthur wouldn’t have come for him on either time if someone else hadn’t made him. John understood that, he did. Even the second time. He’d grown up hanging on Dutch’s every word too. 

It still hurt somedays. 

“Cougars are worse,” John said, and they ended up discussing the many various dangerous animals that had tried to kill them over the years. Fair was fair, Foster said, who turned out to be a bit of an enthusiast. People were the invasive species after all. 

“Knew someone who thought that way,” Arthur said, startling John into flinching. “Wildlife photographer. Mason, his name was.” 

“Mason! I’ve seen some of his prints. In the papers. He had some real fine shots of alligators.” Foster patted himself down. “Must’ve put it in the saddlebags. I took a clipping.” 

“Yeah, don’t remind me,” Arthur muttered, his words stolen by the wind. He went quiet until they pitched camp for the night. To her indignation, Sadie had drawn cooking duty, just because she was a woman. John hovered close by just in case she decided to poison everyone out of spite. 

“Probably doesn’t need that much pepper,” Arthur said. He was lounging beside the cookpot, smoking. 

“You wanna take over, Arthur?” Sadie glared at him across the fire. “I seen _you_ cook. You just char something until it stops moving.” 

“Always worked for me,” Arthur said, chuckling. “You should try it sometime.” 

“No. Thanks. Y’all are an embarrassment to humanity.” 

“See, that’s why you pull cooking duty. Because you care,” Arthur said, gesturing at the cookpot with his cigarette. 

“Ooh, just for that, I’m gonna add extra pepper on your portion.”

Arthur smirked at her. “I can handle my spices. Might even make whatever you’re stirring up easier eating.” 

Sadie scowled at him. “Fuck you, Arthur. You wanna take over, be my guest.” Arthur made a show of putting up his hands and laughed. 

John tried not to stare. Arthur in a playful mood had been rare for a long time. Before Blackwater, even. Now there’d been the stables, at least until John and the Hammer brothers had messed that up. This. Arthur caught his look and frowned. “What?” 

“Nothing.” 

“No, say it. What?” 

“I said nothing,” John said, biting down his instinctive irritation. Arthur could really be like a dog with a bone sometimes.

“The hell is your problem?” Arthur said.

“Jesus, you two, take a walk or I’m gonna hit one of you with the ladle,” Sadie growled. “Berger! You’re French. You probably can cook, yeah?” 

“That’s an unfortunate generalisation,” Berger said, though he came over and hunkered down beside the pot. 

“But true?”

“Oh no. I can’t cook at all. But I can do the next best French thing. Complain.” Berger smirked as he reached with a spoon to taste the stew. Sadie smacked his wrist. “Now, now, Madam. We’ve got some distance to go from here to the Pass that we can’t cover if we’re indisposed.” 

“How long until Dead Man’s Pass?” Travis asked. 

“Another couple of days’ ride from here,” Martin said. He was brushing his horse. “I’ll leave you lot after you make camp tomorrow. The mountains will be close enough to see and you’d be met by their scouts at the foot.” 

“Ain’t you _our_ scout?” Jacob asked. 

“I’ve done the scouting I was told to do,” Martin told him.

Travis spat. “Goddamned greasers. Never doing a full fucking job.” 

Berger uncurled to his feet, his mouth pressed into a thin line. “Mister Hammer. That was very rude. You owe Martin an apology.” 

“Apology? For stating a fact?” Travis said. Arthur shifted to keep Travis within sight, a hand dropping casually close to a pistol. “You think you’d get into Dead Man’s Pass with only us? With no scout? This ain’t a suicide run, is it?” 

“It’s not a suicide run,” Berger said flatly. “I have a plan.” 

“And I’d like to hear it. Before we get any closer,” Travis shot back. “Everyone on this side of the Great Plains has heard of you. Big time bounty hunter like you ain’t gonna get near Cortone in there, even if we can get in.” 

Berger sighed. “How would you describe me, boys?”

“Green vest, gold gun,” Jacob said. 

“I have more sober equipment in my saddlebag,” Berger said. 

“Accent’s a big giveaway too,” Travis countered. “Few Frenchies in these parts.” 

“And that, my boy, can be ‘given away’ as well,” Berger said. His accented English had turned crisp, smoothing into near perfect Queen’s English. “Or would you say there ain’t no Englishmen ‘round these parts neither?” The syllables lengthened further, sprawling into a proper Southern drawl. Travis just clean gaped as John started to laugh, impressed. 

“Fancy trick,” Arthur said. 

“Merci, monsieur,” Berger said, with a little bow. “When you like to hunt dangerous prey, you have to learn a bit of camouflage.” His French accent was back. 

“That aside,” Travis said, unwilling to let go of his temper, “how’re we getting in?” 

“It’s an outlaw hideout. We’ll pretend to be outlaws,” Berger said. He looked over as Martin started shaking his head. 

“Won’t work. Got to be known to get in, a big damn American outlaw of some kind,” Martin said.

“As it so happens, there are within our company friends who fit that bill, and we’ll get in on their graces,” Berger said, calm as ever. 

Jacob stepped back even as Travis looked around sharply. He studied John again, then Arthur. “Jesus. I knew something about you looked familiar,” Travis said slowly. “You’re Arthur Morgan, ain’t you. Of the Van der Linde gang.” 

Arthur got slowly to his feet. “Careful now,” he said. 

“Knew I saw them scars somewhere before on a poster,” Jacob said, glancing at John. “You’re John Marston.” 

“Easy,” John said, narrowing his eyes. Sadie also rose to her feet, her hands clenched. 

“Hell is wrong with all of you?” Travis demanded, looking around the camp. “We’ve got five thousand dollars right here. For Morgan _and_ Marston. Why do we still got to throw our lives away on a suicide run?” 

“Five thousand is nothing compared to Cortone’s bounty,” Berger said, his voice going deadly quiet.

“Way I see it, I’m doing you a favour, Frenchman. We arrest Morgan and Marston here and turn them in. If you and any of your friends are still itching for a fight with Cortone, be our guest. But maybe if you don’t got an easy way in you’d come to your senses,” Travis said. 

Berger took a step forward and froze as Jacob drew his pistol on Sadie. “Easy, Frenchie,” Jacob said, sneering. “Don’t want the lady to get her pretty head blown off, do we?” He looked at John. “You got a knife?”

“Yeah? What about it?” John asked, putting up his hands. “Jesus, boys. Let Sadie go. She ain’t got nothing to do with all this.”

“That obviously ain’t the truth. You two Van der Linde boys have been taking your cues from her since the moment we met. Who is she, your sister? Shared whore?” Jacob laughed as Arthur growled. “Struck a nerve there. Whoa, big guy. You want your lady friend to live? How ‘bout you stick a knife into Mister Berger over there.” 

“Normally nothing would give me greater pleasure, but—” Arthur flinched as Jacob fired a warning shot that whistled over Sadie’s head. 

John instantly drew on Travis, shooting him through the head even as Martin pounced on Jacob’s back, knifing him in the throat. Jacob let out a hoarse gargling sound, firing off another shot even as Sadie barrelled into them both, grappling for the gun. They went down in a heap. Sadie wrenched the pistol free and snarled as she shot Jacob in the face. She sat back, breathing hard, waving away Berger as he offered her a hand up. 

“Nice,” Martin said, unperturbed by the blood all over him. “Now you have two fewer assholes in your team. But two fewer gunmen.”

“I can count, thank you Martin,” Berger muttered something under his breath. “We’re going to have to bury them. Or the vultures will betray our position tomorrow before we’re ready.” 

“We still going?” Foster asked quietly from the side. He lowered his Springfield. 

“Could head back north to find more men,” Lee said.

“No,” Berger said flatly. “Martin can’t watch the Pass forever, and if Cortone leaves he’s impossible to pin down for months until he returns. We hit him at the Pass or not at all.” Berger glanced around the camp. “Any questions?” 

There was silence for a long moment, then Briar got to his feet. Walked over and solemnly offered Sadie a handkerchief and a waterskin. “For the mess,” he said. She took it with a terse nod of thanks. 

Hobbs exhaled and looked over at Berger. “You have got a plan? That’s maybe more elaborate than getting us through the gate and making things up from there?”

Berger nodded. “You know me.”

“You’re real lucky that I need the money. Have we got a shovel?” Hobbs asked.

#

Martin didn’t leave during the night once they were a day out from the Pass. Waited till morning instead. Handshakes all round. “All of you are loco,” he said cheerfully, as he sat by the dregs of the campfire with a cup of coffee in his hands. “But maybe you need loco people to kill Cortone.”

“Amen to that,” Briar said. As they rode out, Berger motioned Arthur to the front. They’d gone over their story and the plan during the night, names and all. Berger looked like a drab bird without his green vest and his gleaming guns stowed. He’d decided to practice his American accent, he said. 

It was a nice day for a ride. Warm out, not too warm. Arthur tried not to think overmuch about what they were doing. Once they got to the Pass there were going to be more options anyhow. If offing Cortone looked impossible. Arthur, Sadie, and John could always switch sides. In Dead Man’s Pass, an unlucky bounty hunter could disappear, famous or not. Pity about the others, whom Arthur liked fine enough, but he had no loyalty to them.

Sadie might indeed never work again in these parts, but maybe Arthur could persuade her to head north. He missed Charles anyway. 

“Might be a bit of a long haul,” John said, spurring Rachel into keeping pace beside Arthur. 

“Not one of our usual jobs, no.” Arthur wasn’t much for planning or scouting or research. He was a weapon due to physical size and his God-given ugly talents, and for years that had suited him fine. Tactical decisions he could make, but fine detail tended to escape him. “It’s Berger’s to run.” Arthur just hoped this really wasn’t a suicide mission. 

“Was gonna say. Martin talked to me last night. When we were on watch. Said he’d tried to warn Sadie off the mission but she wouldn’t listen. Man, some of the stuff he said he’d seen in the Pass? Ain’t decent. They sell people, he says. The Pass is where they like to break them in first.” 

Arthur grimaced. “Saw you trying to talk to Sadie in the morning.”

“Yeah, she near bit my head clean off.” John sounded a little hurt about that. “Martin said Cortone uses the Pass as a processing point. For all his products. Drugs, guns. People.” 

“Think I’m gonna enjoy shooting this guy. Whether there’s gold in it or not,” Arthur said. Some people in the world deserved shooting.

“You still believe in all that? Help people who need helping, shoot people who need shooting?” John asked, skeptical. 

“Guess I do.” That hadn’t changed much for Arthur personally. Even after how things had turned out. He had no illusions about the state of his immortal soul and didn’t rightly care if he ended up in Hell, if that existed. The living world could of itself be Hell for some folks, though. Arthur didn’t mind giving them a hand up. 

“Always liked that about you,” John said, so softly that Arthur nearly didn’t catch it over the drumbeat of hooves. Arthur glanced over. John looked relaxed. Clearly didn’t mind that they were embarking on yet another likely ill-advised venture, however coerced. 

That was what Arthur liked about John. He could have doubts about something but when it came down to business he could be relied on. And his loyalty when earned and repaid was unshakeable. If Arthur hadn’t all but begged John to leave him in the snow, John probably would’ve stayed and died. Even with what Arthur now knew about Jack and Abigail, he didn’t regret it. 

“We should talk,” Arthur said, trying to pitch his voice just for John’s. “If we get through this.” 

John shot him a rabbity look. “Talk about what?” 

“Things in general.” 

“What things?” John asked.

“Jesus, the two of you,” Sadie growled behind Arthur, sounding absolutely exasperated. Arthur couldn’t help it—he started to chuckle. 

“Something wrong?” Foster asked. 

“Men are emotionally illiterate,” Sadie shot back. 

“Not so,” Berger protested. He paused. “Not the French,” he amended. “Why, madam, we have a lot of emotions! And we welcome them. We write about them, make art about them. Sometimes we even complain about them.” 

“Cynicism isn’t an emotion,” John told him. 

“On the contrary, it is our national emotion,” Berger disagreed, “and I highly recommend it. If you think the world is shit and fate is always out to get you, why, you are disappointed less often. Have some fine wine and watch the world burn, that’s what I say.”

“All the while complaining about everything,” Arthur said. 

“Complaining airs the soul. Also highly recommended,” Berger said, unperturbed. “Now. Positions please.”

Dead Man’s Pass grew broader in the horizon as they got closer. It looked from the distance as though God had built a great sandstone step in the sky, a platform that He had then attacked with a knife. Great ravines were cut into stone, laced between crags. As they got within rifle range of the nearest high crag, four riders in wide-brimmed hats crossed out from a narrow ravine and headed towards them in an easy canter. Arthur stayed relaxed, slowing down and holding up a hand. 

“Couple of people with rifles up high,” John murmured. 

“I see ‘em,” Arthur said. The riders slowed down as they got closer, and Arthur gawked. 

“Arthur.” John sounded tense. “That horse.” 

“Yeah.” Arthur would recognise the white horse under the rider in front anywhere. As the Count was reined to a halt, his rider tipped up the brim of his hat. 

“Fancy seeing you boys here,” said Dutch.


	7. Chapter 7

Sadie hadn’t been sure what to expect, but the town hidden in Dead Man’s Pass was orderly. Clean. Normal, if you overlooked the fact that everyone was wearing hardware. There was even a goddamned hotel. They’d wound through narrow ravines to get here, at points even having to ride in single file. ‘Here’ was a bigger valley bisected by smaller ravines, a dirt road lined by stores. Arthur paid a contribution to the upkeep of the Pass at the ‘bank’ where told.

“Little like old times,” Dutch said. He smiled tightly. Dutch looked… older, somehow. Diminished. He was thinner and dressed all in black. His sideburns had grown out and were silvering against his mustache.

“Yeah.” Arthur still sounded disoriented. Even John kept staring at Dutch as though he’d thought he was hallucinating. 

“Your… people can camp down one of the ravines. That one there’s free. As to the caves—” Dutch waved towards the other end of the ravine, “—that’s where the more permanent residents of the Pass live and there’s no call for disturbing them. If you want the ranch, it’s further up top. You can buy meat there at a premium. Hunting’s scarce ‘round these parts.”

“Maybe the rest can get settled in while we catch up?” Sadie suggested. Arthur recovered enough to nod and gesture at Berger, who tipped his hat and led the others down an indicated ravine. “Hey Dutch,” Sadie said, once they were off. “How come these two boys get the time of day from you and I don’t?” 

Dutch stared at her for a long moment before he let out a harsh laugh. “Mrs Adler. It is good to see you. D’you know, I might actually even have missed you. More than I missed these two bastards, at least.” 

“Hoping so. I’m parched. Can we get a drink somewhere?” Sadie asked. Dutch nodded, narrow-eyed. The malevolence was still there, the madness she’d seen at the end. It’d been papered over again through the years but either Dutch had decided he didn’t need to hide it in here or he no longer cared to try. 

“There’s a saloon. Let me buy all of you a drink,” Dutch said. They hitched their horses outside the large saloon and went inside. Lots of tables. Long bar. There was even a piano, though nobody was playing. Sadie whistled as they sat at a table and Dutch motioned for the bartender to bring a round of whiskey. 

“This is pretty goddamned well-organised,” Sadie said, looking around. “Why didn’t we hide out here before?”

Dutch forced a smile. “Probably because the both of us wouldn’t have been able to resist shooting any O’Driscoll in here on sight, which would’ve broken the rules.” 

“I kinda regret doing that all at once. Now I ain’t got anything left of them but fond memories.” Sadie glanced up as the bartender approached with a bottle of whiskey, pouring shots for them all and taking some cash from Dutch.

“To fond memories,” Dutch said, with an ironic smile. They toasted the bitter ashes of things that had been and drank. 

“You been here all this while?” Arthur asked. Hard liquor had jolted him out of his bewilderment. 

“First rule of this place,” Dutch tipped his glass at Arthur. “No questions asked _means_ no questions asked. About jobs, residency, the like. Unless it has to do with the well-being of the Pass, of course.” 

“You running this place now?” Sadie asked warily. At Dutch’s startled look, Sadie said, “You was in the welcoming committee.”

“No, no. This place is a bit of a commune. Everyone pitches in. Was just my turn to be part of the ‘welcoming committee’. Depending on how long you people stay here, you’d get a turn at that as well.” Dutch poured them all another glass. 

“This place ain’t got a boss? Find that hard to believe,” Sadie said as she took her glass. “You outlaw boys are like cats. Always fighting and yowling until someone comes out on top.” 

“I suppose we are at that,” Dutch said, and looked sharply at the doors as they swung open.

The newcomer smiled broadly as everyone eased their hands away from their weapons. He was a big man, nearly as big as Arthur, built like a bear. Thick black whiskers and a beard swallowed his face and near overshadowed hard blue eyes. He was dressed like a rich city merchant, in a fine tailored suit hung with a gold pocket watch. No weapons. Behind him a pair of rangy armed guards took up positions at the door, surveying the exits. 

“Mister Van der Linde,” said the newcomer, tipping his bowler hat. “I heard you met some old friends at our doorstep.”

“Mister Cortone.” Dutch rose to his feet. “That I did. It’s a small world, it is. These fine folk here are Sadie Adler, John Marston, and Arthur Morgan. My friends, this is Mister Daniel Cortone, a resident of this fine establishment.”

“Pleased,” Arthur said, tipping his hat. John and Sadie followed suit.

“Ah, Mister Morgan. I’ve heard of you.” Cortone looked at them keenly. “Are they joining your billet, Mister Van der Linde?”

“No.” Dutch’s mouth curled tightly. “All sons have got to grow up sometime. Arthur here is striking out on his own.” 

“As long as he learns and obeys the rules in this place.” Cortone stared at Sadie. “Ain’t often that we have female guests around here.”

“Why, is there a problem?” Arthur asked flatly. 

“Not at all. Your lady friend may just have to be careful. There are some… difficult people hereabouts, shall we say. And we’d all like to avoid unfortunate accidents.” Cortone smiled. 

Sadie glowered at him. “How ‘bout maybe we just teach all these ‘difficult people’ the importance of keeping their dicks in their goddamned pants? Maybe with a knife against their balls?” 

Cortone laughed. It was a strange wheezing sound with little humour. “It’s rare that I meet a woman with some fire. Perhaps you should have dinner with me sometime, Miss Adler. At my villa.” 

“That’s _Mrs_ Adler to you. Thanking you kindly,” Sadie shot back. 

“Of course. Well. It was nice meeting all of you.” Cortone tipped his hat and left, his men behind him. Dutch sat back down.

“Probably shouldn’t do this dinner thing,” John said cautiously. 

Sadie glared at him. “I wasn’t born yesterday, Marston.” 

“John does love the painfully obvious. Speaking of which. John, how _are_ Abigail and Jack? Thought you wanted to leave it all and become a ‘family man’,” Dutch said. 

John stiffened at the venom in Dutch’s tone. “They’re fine. Thank you, Dutch. For asking.”

“Of course I had to ask. Seeing as the lot of you took their well-being so, so very seriously.” Dutch downed the rest of his glass and got up. “Best we stay out of each other’s way in here.” 

“I agree,” Arthur said, though he looked tired as he said it. 

Dutch stared at him for a long moment. The fractured malevolence in him seemed to ease, if only for a moment. “Arthur. I… I’m pleased. To see that you’re well.” He tipped his hat and strode out.

“You guys okay?” Sadie asked in the silence that followed. 

Arthur shuddered and poured them all a generous measure of whiskey. “I think I want a word with our friend Abraham. John, how about you sniff around town, see what you can learn. Sadie—”

“I’m coming with you,” Sadie said, having no real confidence in Arthur to have ‘a word’ with anyone without things maybe escalating. Arthur nodded. They drank up. Left John nursing his glass and walked out onto the street. Town was getting busier as the day wore on. All the passers-by were men, who gawked at her then glanced at Arthur and pretended to be on their way. 

“I don’t like this place,” Arthur muttered, as they got on their horses. 

“Oh, _you_ don’t like it? I’m starting to feel like a prime cut of beef.” Sadie tucked Missy beside Buell as they headed down the street. “What the hell is wrong with some people?” 

“The outlaw class tends to attract a certain kind of folk,” Arthur said. He sounded like he was quoting from something: his lips quirked. “That’s the essence of the word. Outside the law. People who think they can do what they like to anything, to anyone. But there ain’t no call to act like an animal just because you can.” 

“Hosea tell you that?” Sadie guessed. 

“Dutch, actually. A long time ago.” Arthur looked deflated. Pale, despite the alcohol. The mere fact of Dutch’s presence had shaken him in a way Sadie hadn’t seen before. Before she could ask him about that, Arthur said, “You got family, Sadie?”

“Got an aunt in Boston. Why?” Mrs Grimshaw had asked Sadie this what felt like a lifetime ago in the snow, trying to keep her mind off her grief. When they’d thawed out and headed down south, Hosea had asked Sadie gently if she’d wanted money for a ticket up to Boston. She’d said she’d wanted to stay. 

“Parents?” 

“Long dead. Was cattle rustlers what did it. I was away in town or I would’ve been shot as well. Didn’t even get to watch them hang for it. Bounty hunters brought them in dead.” Sadie made a face. “Them hustlers was so young, that’s what I remember. Weren’t much older than me. After that Jake proposed and I said yes. He told me… he told me he wanted to take me somewhere north. Away from people who’d shoot people over a few skinny cows.” Sadie let out a harsh laugh. “Funny how that turned out.” 

Arthur’s expression grew tight. “Sorry to hear it.”

“Oh, I knows you done livestock hustling in your time. While I was in the gang, even. Stole some horses didn’t you? Sheep too.” 

“Among other things.” Arthur frowned to himself. “I don’t remember what I was trying to say.” 

“Dutch and Hosea, they was like your parents, yeah?” 

Arthur nodded. “Dutch taught me how to read and write. Taught John and some of the others too. He and Hosea, they picked us up when we had nowhere to go. They saved our lives. Taught us how to live in this world.”

“Taught you boys to live outside this world, you mean.” Sadie stared evenly at Arthur. “Way I see it. Maybe they did care, in their own way. At least at the start. But they used you boys too. Hell, John told me that he started hustling poker tables at what, thirteen? Fourteen? He was _proud_ about it. _They used you boys._ Y’all didn’t have a real big choice in the way your lives turned out because of them. And you knows that. That’s why you wanted Jack and Abigail to get out.” 

Arthur said nothing. They threaded into the narrow ravine in silence.

#

Foster was busy directing the setup of the camp, and he waved them to the back of the site as they approached. From the town, their designated campsite could only be reached through a single narrow ravine. It opened out to a gently inclined space which had a paddock and even a couple of cabins next to a stone well. They found Berger at the back, studying a crack in the rock that was maybe wide enough for a child to fit through. The small space eventually wound off toward the latrines.

“Baker,” Sadie said. Berger was passing as Abraham Baker, an American from up north, if only because he couldn’t seem to manage a prolonged attempt at a Southern accent. Gave him a headache, he said. 

“Mrs Adler.” Berger looked away from the crack. “We probably should have this blocked up. Just in case.” 

“You’re a cautious man,” Arthur said. That made him feel a little better about their situation.

Berger smiled his vulpine smile. “I’m a hunter in the den of the biggest game of my career, Mister Morgan. Oh, I’m cautious.” He gestured for Foster to come over and had a quiet word with him, then started walking towards the cabins. “It’ll look odd if Morgan doesn’t take one of the cabins,” Berger said in a low voice. “Maybe Marston as well. Seeing as we got in so easily because Mister Van der Linde recognised you both on sight.”

“I’ll share one with John. Sadie should take the other one,” Arthur said. 

Berger nodded. “Did Dutch give you people any trouble in town?”

“Naw. Speaking about Dutch,” Sadie said in a drawl, “was he what you was hoping I’d bring to you? Ain’t nobody left but Dutch and Arthur who’d have a big enough bounty.” 

“On the contrary, I’d have been happy with senior members like Bill Williamson or Javier Escuella. Their bounties might not have been quite high enough, but the Van der Linde gang is fairly well-known and we might have been able to talk our way in. Especially after that Saint Denis heist.” Berger led them into the closest cabin and turned around. “But yes. I heard you still had contacts in the gang. I thought you might bring Dutch if you were given the correct incentive. Or that I might follow Marston to him. I didn’t know that Morgan was still alive.” 

Sadie leaned against the wall and crossed her hands with a sharp laugh. “What made you think I had that kinda pull on Dutch?” 

Berger shrugged. He sat against the table in the cabin, one of the few pieces of furniture it had. There was a dusty cot and a narrow kitchen, some rickety chairs. A few crates. “The Pinkertons believe you were seen with Dutch in Saint Denis prior to the bank heist. At Colm O’Driscoll’s hanging. According to multiple witnesses, he personally escorted you to safety when there was a disturbance. He was dressed in a lawman’s uniform.” 

“We had a common interest. Watching Colm hang. I wasn’t fucking him if that’s what the Agency thought,” Sadie said sourly.

Berger made a face. “Quite. Well, as I said, I was pleasantly surprised to see Mister Morgan instead. Dutch is, by all reports, an unpredictable figure prone to random acts of violence.”

“Ain’t we all,” Arthur said. He tugged out a chair and sat down in it. 

“That being said, now that Dutch _is_ here. Do you think he’d be a problem?” Berger asked. 

Arthur passed a hand over his face. “I think it’s clear I don’t know Dutch no more. Something kinda broke in him. Maybe after Blackwater, maybe before. We’ve agreed to stay out of each other’s way.” 

“Hopefully that agreement holds.” Berger didn’t sound convinced. “We’ll be here for a while until I have a better grasp of the situation. So settle in, friends. And for God’s sake, don’t start any trouble.”

Hobbs bought supplies from the town as the camp was set up for the evening, and after a brief squabble, Lee volunteered to cook. “Because Briar doesn’t care and white people don’t understand how to use seasonings,” he said. Since this was the most number of words he’d ever said within everyone’s company the camp was too surprised to offer any objections. After dinner was served, Hobbs pulled out his harmonica and Briar offered a song while Sadie playfully danced with Foster and then with John. Berger and Lee clapped along and whistled to Briar’s rhythm. It was strange and familiar at the same time. 

Arthur had never been good with parties. He’d liked them fine, but maybe because he tended to spend days away from camp by himself he was never good with knowing where to sit, what to do. Some nights he just went to sleep early after a couple of drinks. He sat aside and drank. Wasn’t like anything was wrong, not in the way he could pin it. 

Just. Now there was no Javier with his instruments, no Karen and Tilly taking turns to see who could tell the wildest and dirtiest stories. No Uncle and his made-up tales, no Bill and Sean with their ridiculous bets. No Swanson and Strauss reminiscing about days gone by, no Mary-Beth and Molly singing. No terrible limericks from Jenny or pranks from the Callanders, no poems from Charles. None of Lenny’s dancing or Pearson’s cooking. No Abigail and her card tricks, no Jack trying his best to imitate everyone. No Hosea and his endless fishing stories. No Dutch. Arthur had lost almost everyone and yet the loss that still hurt the most was Dutch. The engineer of the destruction of the life he had known. 

Funny world. Arthur had loved Hosea more but losing Dutch hurt deeper, somehow. Maybe because Dutch was still alive. You could make your peace more easily with the dead. 

Arthur had one more drink, then made a show of being tired and closed himself in the cabin. He leaned against the door, his back to laughter, and breathed. Slow. Counted his breaths. Slower. Let habit take him to bed. Hooked his hat on the bed frame of the cot and removed his boots, then his coat. The holsters were next, then the bandoliers and knives. He dumped his bedroll on the cot for a pillow. Stripped unarmed, Arthur lay down and tried to sleep. 

Eventually, the noise outside died down and people started shuffling off to bed. Foster was posting the first watch, Hobbs offered to do the next. A door opened and closed in the other cabin. John stumbled into theirs, unsteady on his feet as he closed the door. Arthur probably should’ve pretended harder to be sleeping. John looked at him in drunken surprise. 

“You all right?” John slurred. 

“Yeah. Go to sleep.” 

He’d been terser than he’d intended to be. John sighed. He sat down heavily on the side of Arthur’s cot instead, taking off his hat. “Sure you all right?” John asked, more softly. 

_Just go to sleep, Marston_. The retort sat on the tip of his tongue. Arthur didn’t speak. The silence stretched, unrolling in the gloom. Outside someone whistled to himself. John slowly took off his boots and coat, telegraphing each move. He made a show of putting them aside. Arthur pulled him down. The cot groaned under their weight but somehow they managed to fit, with Arthur’s back pressed to the wall and John curled flush against him. 

Arthur tucked John’s head under his chin. Held him the way he had, years and another life ago, when John had been a kid prone to the occasional nightmare. The way Dutch had held Arthur when he had first been taken in, when he’d wake up crying for his father to spare his mother the whip. This was strange and yet the same. John was stroking Arthur’s arm, murmuring something soothing that Arthur couldn’t catch. He smelled of whiskey and comfort and of the life that Arthur still mourned. Arthur slept.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning** : This chapter changes the overall rating of the fic to E.

John woke up because he was overheating. As he squirmed to get free of the warm weight sprawled against him, it grumbled against his ear and snuggled closer. 

_That_ got John’s attention. He shot awake, shocked. Judging from the dim light from the lanterns outside the cabin’s closed windows, it was still dark outside. Arthur. Arthur was curled against him, a heavy arm slung over John’s belly, snoring gently against John’s hair. 

John slowly raised his hand. With deliberate care, he pinched himself on the arm. Nope. Real. Huh. For a situation that John had dreamed about on and off for years, now that it was actually reality he was at a bit of a loss. Should he move? Wake Arthur up? Go back to sleep? And. Daydreams were one thing, but the reality of having Arthur against him like this was actually uncomfortable. Arthur was as warm as a furnace. And he was _heavy_. John’s undershirt was glued to him with sweat. Days on the trail meant he didn’t smell that good and neither did Arthur. John bit down on the laugh that threatened to wriggle out of him. Here he was living one of his fantasies and it wasn’t enough? Hell, Berger was a bad influence after all.

Arthur snuffled against his hair, shifting gently. Regretfully, John tried to lever Arthur’s arm off him, twisting to get some space. Arthur made a grumbling sound and John stopped. When his breathing relaxed, John tried again.

“Go to sleep, Marston,” Arthur muttered. 

“You’re awake?” Bad question. John grimaced. 

Arthur exhaled loudly. “Yes, I’m fucking awake. _Someone_ elbowed me in the ribs.” 

“Sorry.” Despite the improbability of the situation, John started to laugh. He tried to swallow it, but the mirth pressed out of him sideways, until he was shaking against Arthur, joyous. When was the last time he’d been this happy? Arthur made another grumpy sound and prodded John in the ribs, but John twisted against the bedroll Arthur had been using as a pillow to muffle his laughter. 

“God damn you go to _sleep_.” Arthur shoved at John’s ribs and John twisted against him instinctively. Arthur froze. John had pressed his knee right up against something hot and hard. Wasn’t that Arthur’s…? 

In the warm dark, Arthur cleared his throat. “John,” he said. John had imagined Arthur saying his name like that too, gruff and husky. Hell, Arthur wasn’t even moving away. He was watching John quietly. Waiting to see what John was going to do next. John let out a slow breath. Shifted up on his knees so he could press up closer, until he could feel Arthur breathing against his face. John stopped. He didn’t really want things to change, not if there was a chance that it could get worse. If he pissed Arthur off back to post-Blackwater Arthur. John couldn’t bear that a second time. 

“John,” Arthur whispered. He leaned up. 

The kiss was a nervous brush, pressed against John’s absolute astonishment. Thankfully his innate competitiveness kicked in. John pushed Arthur down against the cot with a low growl, kissing him back. Arthur’s stubble rasped against him as John licked into Arthur’s mouth, desperate for this even with the sour taste of sleep. 

Arthur curled big fingers into John’s sweat-damp hair and held him close, kissed him back. John was getting hard, pushed against Arthur’s hip. Arthur gasped as John rubbed against him and he pushed a hand between them, grasping John through his pants. It was a little too rough but John didn’t care, thrusting into Arthur’s grip as he buried his moan against Arthur’s throat. He rocked into Arthur’s palm as Arthur got the hang of stroking him, twisting until he got a better angle. John whimpered as Arthur figured out just the right degree of pressure. Arthur’s breathing was growing shallower. He was _enjoying this_.

“Arthur,” John breathed against Arthur’s ear. Arthur shivered and pulled him up with his free hand, kissing him hard on the mouth and that figured it for John. Twisting away to bite down on the bedroll, John came so hard that he was a little dizzy at the end as he slumped down against Arthur. 

Arthur stayed quiet as John caught his breath, then made a surprised sound as John shifted down to fumble at Arthur’s belt. “Hell are you doing?” Arthur hissed. 

“Repaying the favour,” John whispered back. At Arthur’s silence, John glanced up. “You never had someone suck your dick before?” 

“Well, uh.” Arthur coughed. “Not often. Been told it’s a bit. Of a handful.” 

“Now I’m kinda curious.” John ran his fingertips lightly up the bulge in Arthur’s pants. It did feel substantial, and the groan Arthur had to stifle against his own wrist was promising. When John finally navigated buckles and buttons and got Arthur’s cock free he had to take a moment to get both his hands on all that flesh and hell. “‘Bit of a handful’ is an understatement,” John said, awed.

Arthur passed a hand over his face, the movement visible as gray outlines in the dim light. “Yeah, well—”

“Kinda wish I could have some light right now,” John said honestly. He spat on his hands and squeezed Arthur with both, making a tight fist of his fingers at the thick base and stroking up. 

John lowered his head when Arthur merely twitched against his grip. Licked the head and grinned as Arthur hissed, “Jesus, John.” 

“I’ve thought about this for a long time,” John whispered, and went to work. Stretched his mouth over the cap—God, his jaw was gonna ache so good in the morning—and licked the taste off the tip. Breathed Arthur in, musk and sweat and all. John didn’t often have cause to do this—easier and safer to pay someone to do it to him—but he’d tried to learn. Liked it, even. Liked having someone tremble and curse under him, liked the taste, the weight on his tongue and the stretch in his jaw. John tucked his lips over his teeth and drank Arthur down as Arthur twitched and scratched at his shoulders and hissed. The cot creaked dangerously under them both, even as John slipped off the bed for a better angle, pulling Arthur’s hips to the edge after him. 

John’s throat was aching by the time John gave up trying to take all of Arthur in and used his hand on the rest. Arthur was still jammed up tight against the back of his throat, already leaking. Big fingers were twisted in John’s hair, and Arthur made an incredulous noise as John tugged at his hips, trying to urge him to thrust. Arthur’s moans were muffled, stifled against his own fingers. He rocked against John’s mouth, nowhere near hard enough to choke him. “John,” Arthur gasped, then stifled another moan as John freed himself impatiently with his free hand. Stroked himself in time to Arthur’s thrusts as he got hard again, no longer caring whether he was being too loud. Arthur was muffling curses against something, rocking harder, his hand scrabbling against John’s scalp as John only choked his moans against the flesh in his throat and began to suck. 

“Jesus,” Arthur whispered. “John. Goddamn, John.” He let out a low whine, his hand tightening in John’s hair as his cock pulsed. Made a strangled noise as John drank it down, hungrily licking up the spill as he pulled at himself until he was burying his moan against Arthur’s thigh. 

Arthur’s breathing took a while to quiet down. Unsure of what to do next, John wiped his hand on the cot and started to buckle himself up. He was buttoned up when Arthur finally started to tuck himself in, shifting to the side on the cot with a yawn. “Now can you go to sleep?” Arthur asked. 

Blinking, John climbed up on the bed. He settled cautiously on the edge and huffed as Arthur pulled him close. “Arthur,” John murmured. 

“Hmm?”

“This… wasn’t what you meant when you said we needed to talk, was it?” 

“Why, you disappointed?” Arthur sounded amused. John hesitated anyway, until Arthur sniffed and prodded him. “Stop thinking so much. You don’t have the brain for it.” 

That punctured the tension in the air. John settled down against Arthur with a laugh. “I’m starting to feel better about this Cortone thing,” he said. Arthur let out a snort, curling his arm back over John’s waist.

#

“Martin said you was out for revenge,” Sadie said. She’d volunteered to follow Lee on reconnaissance and was already regretting it. She’d had a little too much whiskey last night and her head hurt.

Lee glanced briefly over his shoulder at her. “Say that louder, why don’t you.” 

“We’re alone. Hell, I don’t even rightly know where we are.” They’d climbed up to the top of the cliff overlooking the camp and had kept on walking. The ground was riven with cracks and broken against ridged teeth. Somewhere underground was Cortone’s hideout. 

“That’s the idea. To find out. There has to be another way into Cortone’s section. He definitely keeps his business away from the town.” 

Sadie nodded. John and Hobbs had made separate, discreet inquiries around town and that was the consensus. Cortone was known for his ‘products’, but no wagon trains came up through town. Too much of a communal temptation, maybe. “Did you know someone who died? To the altered opium?” 

Lee shook his head as he walked. He didn’t answer Sadie for so long that she thought that he was going to ignore her. When Lee came to an abrupt stop, Sadie nearly walked clean into him. “Had a sister,” Lee said flatly. “White people here have funny ideas about Chinese women. That maybe they are built differently. Between the legs. Or have different appetites. Makes them popular as whores. They get tricked away or stolen.” 

“Is she here?” 

“She died,” Lee said after a long pause, “eventually.”

“I’m…” Sadie trailed off briefly. _Sorry_ felt too trite. 

“Sorry? Don’t be. Wasn’t your fault. She got herself a knife somehow. Freed some of the others. Killed a couple of their tormentors and wounded one other so badly that he died after a few weeks. They shot her when they couldn’t pull her off him.” 

Sadie grit her teeth. “Cortone’s men?”

“I’ve spent years chopping bits off the tail of the snake. Now I am here for its head.” Lee glanced at Sadie thoughtfully. “If we fail. If we get caught. Shoot yourself.”

“What?”

“If we get caught. Shoot yourself. Right through the forehead. Better that than the alternative.” Lee turned away and kept walking. 

“Or I might follow your sister’s example. Knife a few bastards before I go,” Sadie said. Lee stopped and turned around again. Sadie stared into his eyes until Lee nodded and looked away. 

“I am sorry for your loss as well,” Lee said. 

Sadie blinked. “What?” 

“Who did you lose? Husband? Parents? I know the look.” 

“All of those. Was losing the husband what did it,” Sadie said. She loped over until she was shoulder to shoulder with Lee. Up close he had delicate features, slender shoulders. His scarf was wound around his throat despite the heat.

“You joined the Van der Linde gang after?” 

“Kinda.” Sadie ended up telling Lee about the snow and the fire, about the thawing days afterward. Sketching in how Dutch had slowly come apart, into madness and hatred. 

Lee was a good listener. Or maybe Sadie had just needed someone to talk to for a while and hadn’t even noticed. Arthur didn’t count. When Charles had dumped Arthur on her hands talking to Arthur had been like talking to a very deep well, watching her words drop in, echoing on nothing. He’d been getting better too. Up until now. Sadie hadn’t missed Arthur bowing out early from the party. 

“Few gangs would let a woman ride with them,” Lee said. 

“Oh, I don’t know about ‘let’. Where I was concerned,” Sadie said. She’d just mounted up with the rest of the boys whenever the call came. An extra gun was an extra gun and things were usually desperate if everyone had to ride out.

Lee started to speak and held up a hand, looking up sharply. They took cover against a ridge as Lee made a note in his book. “Sentry up in the northeast,” Lee murmured. “Right where Martin said he’d be.” 

“Didn’t Martin also say this place was a maze?” Sadie whispered back. 

“We don’t need to map all of it out. Just the important parts. Sentries. Exits.” 

“You sound like you do this often.” Sadie approved. She’d had enough of half-baked plans. 

“Often enough. Helps to be prepared. Learn the land. I don’t like relying on luck.” 

“That’s Berger’s way?”

“On the jobs I go with him, yes. We do recon _my_ way.” 

“I’d like to learn,” Sadie said. She couldn’t assume that she would have Arthur and John with her forever. Even if she wanted to. Lee studied her for a long moment, then nodded. He peeked over the ridge. Sentry wasn’t looking their way. They crept on. 

It took the better part of the day for them to finally find a cliff edge that overlooked a stream that fed out from underground. There was a ledge along the stream that had been cut there, wide enough for a wagon. They watched it for a while. Eventually, someone walked out, stretching their legs and smoking, a rifle cradled in an arm. They flicked the cigarette butt into the water when they were done and walked back in.

“That it? We done?” Sadie whispered. She was hot and tired and sore from climbing all over the mesa. 

Lee looked amused. “Not at all. You can go back if you want, but I want to check off a few more points on Martin’s notes.” 

“Nah, I’ll stay if you are.” 

“We could take a break—” Lee cut himself off with a grimace, rubbing his belly. He sat down, breathing slowly. “Not now,” he muttered to himself. 

“Uh. You all right?” Sadie asked, concerned. “Upset stomach?” 

“I wish,” Lee said, then grimaced as though he regretted saying that. A spasm of pain crossed his face. “It’ll pass.” 

“Let’s get into the shade.” Sadie helped Lee limp towards the nearest ridge, where they sat in the relative shade. Lee tried to steady his breathing, drinking water. “You hurt? Maybe we should go back. Or you could head back and rest. If you give me instructions I can keep checking the area.”

“It’ll pass,” Lee grit out, and drank some more water. Sadie sat with him, breaking out a pack of biscuits which they ate slowly to hide the noise. 

“I’ve got some tonic,” Sadie said in a conciliatory tone, “if you need it.” 

Lee huffed. “If only that worked on this. No. I said it’ll pass. Usually isn’t this severe. And it’s come on early but. Probably the stress.” 

“‘Come on early’? You sick? Berger know?” That was gonna be a problem. They were already two men down, even if the Hammer boys had been assholes. And Sadie had no patience for men who tried to push on past their limits just to prove they could, or whatever that was. Not when her lives and those of her friends were at stake.

“I’m not sick. It’s just. Once a month.” Lee breathed in and out for a long moment, his eyes going distant. Thinking something over. Then he looked Sadie in the eyes and said, “Might be a familiar problem for you too. Seeing as you’re also a woman.” 

Sadie blinked. They finished the biscuits in silence. As Sadie dusted off the crumbs, she said politely, “I have got spare supplies, if you need ‘em.”

“Thanks. Got my own.” Lee drank another mouthful of water. “Berger knows, before you ask. It’s. Easier to pass as a man.” 

“You don’t got to explain yourself to me,” Sadie said. 

“I want to. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to explain it to anyone. Since a nosy Frenchman found me bleeding to death in a river.”

“Your sister—”

“They also shot at the women who fled,” Lee said distantly. “Some of us died then. The luckier ones, maybe. I got away. Barely.”

“Berger got you into this business?”

“Ha! No. He dumped me at a home for Chinese women. Run by a missionary couple. They were kind enough, but spending the rest of my days quietly there wasn’t what I wanted. After I got better I sought Berger out. Must’ve followed him halfway around this part of the world before he finally caved.” Lee patted the Mauser at her belt. “Bought this with my first bounty.” 

“Nice. Though I prefer Schofields myself,” Sadie said, nodding at hers. “Also bought mine with my first bounty.” Before that, her pistols had been from the communal gang armoury. They talked pistols and gunsmiths in low voices until Lee’s cramps passed. 

As they kept walking, Lee said, “Only Berger knows. I’d prefer if you didn’t tell your friends. Men have got strange ideas about women. Especially coloured women.” 

“I knows,” Sadie said, nodding. “I promise. Thank you. For trusting me.” 

“We have to trust each other a little to pull off this job,” Lee said, guarded. “Also. I say this as a courtesy. I know you and your friends have no reason to be fond of Mister Berger. He’s a ruthless man when it comes to what he wants. I will still be very sorry if he were to die.”

“I getcha,” Sadie said. She’d guessed as much. “You owe him.”

“I don’t. All debts between us have long been fully paid.” Lee smiled her tight, sharp smile. “But he was a friend to me when I had none, and I will remember that forever.” 

“I knows someone like that myself,” Sadie said as they walked on, keeping out of sight of high crags where sentries might patrol. “We saw him on the way in, as it turns out.” 

“Dutch?”

“Yeah. He saved me. Was a friend to me when I had none.” It had been Dutch’s decision to save her from the snow. Arthur and the others would’ve been just as happy to maybe leave her be or send her on her way with a spare horse. Dutch had refused to turn her away. Sadie remembered that. She would remember it forever, even after the way things had worked out. 

Lee studied her soberly. “My gratitude isn’t absolute,” she said. She patted Sadie on the shoulder. Checked her notebook. “We should be passing another sentry position soon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Being Singaporean myself of Chinese/Peranakan heritage I've been trying to make a conscious effort to not only pass the Bechdel test in my recent longfics (failing which, to have significant women characters) but also to try and have more Asian characters, especially Asian women characters. There needs to be more of us everywhere... ;3


	9. Chapter 9

Arthur watched Sadie follow Lee out on another scouting run. “Nice to see them getting along,” John said. Lee gave Sadie a hand up over the edge of the ravine, pulling her out of sight. 

“I’d rather she stayed in the camp,” Arthur said, “but she’s her own woman and Berger don’t seem concerned.” 

“We already done most of what he wanted,” John said. Berger, Foster, and Hobbs had gone to check out the ranch. Ostensibly to buy more fresh meat. That left them and Briar minding the camp. Briar was reading a book in the shade, ignoring them both. Was their turn to watch the camp anyhow. 

They’d been here near a week now. Arthur had never been on a job that’d taken this long before. It was Hosea who managed the planning, usually with the help of the gang’s women. Arthur was just brought in later as the muscle. He wasn’t sure if he liked this… this sort of nothing much happening. Even with John around as a new distraction. 

Things felt… simpler with John, somehow. Where they hadn’t been with Mary or even Eliza. Maybe it was because Arthur had already lived with John for most of their lives, hell, loved John for most of that. Intimacy was different and yet the same. Hadn’t shaken anything loose between them, or even changed very much. That was the scary part. Arthur’s love wasn’t the same as John’s, not even remotely so. He’d loved Mary but even that hadn’t been the same, not like this fierce and jealous thing of John’s that had burned unabated for over a decade, consuming everything, forgiving everything. Arthur had never loved anyone like that. He wasn’t sure if he was capable of it. 

“This is weird,” John said, in a low voice.

“What is?”

“All this waiting.” 

“You’ve done watch duties before.” Arthur had been glad when he’d been considered too senior to pull camp sentry duties. 

“Well yeah. This is different. Hosea’s and Dutch’s plans never had us hanging about anywhere for long.”

“Probably because things tended to catch fire if we did.” 

“That was just one time!” John scowled. “And it ain’t my fault neither. What with that old biddy what thought you pinched her ass and then Javier’s foot getting stuck in that chicken coop when we tried to run.”

“We did utterly fuck that bank recon up,” Arthur conceded.

“ _We_? You did, you mean. If you really wanted to pinch someone’s bum—”

“Firstly, I did not fucking touch her bum,” Arthur growled. “I bumped into her, that’s all. By. Accident.”

“Lucky Hosea wasn’t too mad and Dutch was too busy laughing when he bailed us out of jail,” John said gloomily. “I think he actually talked the sheriff into feeling sorry for us ‘poor benighted souls’.” 

“Ain’t like he didn’t have a point,” Arthur said, chuckling ruefully. “Think Mrs Grimshaw was gunning to give us all a real hiding for all that.” 

“I still don’t know what ‘benighted’ even means,” John said, grinning. 

“Means ‘uninformed’, son.” Dutch stepped into view down the ravine that led to their camp. He held up his hands in a playful gesture of surrender when John’s hand dropped to his holster. “Makes me sad to hear that the two of you ain’t become as learned as I would’ve liked.”

“What a goddamned shame,” John said flatly.

Arthur held up a hand as he saw Briar slowly getting to his feet. “What d’you want?” Arthur asked. “Thought you said we was to leave each other alone.” 

“So I did.” Dutch smiled. Familiar yet unfamiliar. It was Dutch’s smile, without the mischief, without the affection and warmth. Or maybe Arthur just remembered everything sideways after all. Maybe the warmth had never really been there. “But after thinking it over I suppose I do want a word with Arthur. You boys owe me that much.”

“Owe?” John repeated, incredulous. 

“Stay here,” Arthur told him. At John’s glare, Arthur repeated, more quietly, “Stay. Here.” John’s lip curled, but he nodded. Arthur took in a breath and walked over to Dutch, thumbs hooked in his belt. They walked out of the ravine, heading slowly towards the town. 

Again, the familiarity was jarring. Arthur had walked with Dutch like this a hundred times, a thousand times. Talking about jobs, talking about nothing. Once, talking about Isaac and Eliza after he’d found their graves, with Dutch’s arm curled over his shoulder. Once about Mary, with Dutch pushing a bottle of brandy into his hand. Hosea was the father Arthur had loved most, but in many ways, Dutch was the father who had mattered most. Even in the end. 

“Thought nobody recovered from TB,” Dutch said, once they were out of sight of the camp.

“Disappointed?”

Dutch exhaled, though he didn’t look at Arthur. “As hard as it might be for you to believe, Arthur. I do love you as my son.”

Arthur huffed. “Yeah? I believed that once.” 

“Fathers do make the occasional mistakes,” Dutch retorted. He was wearing his preferred black hat today, with its leather hat band, his vest lined at the flanks in red. “Your birth father most certainly did. I remember the dreams you used to get.” 

“Yeah, he hit my mother. Would belt me too, when the mood got to him. Or when he got too deep into the bottle or when a job went wrong. Don’t remember him ever leaving me or my friends to die. Don’t remember him destroying a Native tribe just because it’d suit his purposes.” Arthur stared at Dutch grimly. “What d’you want, Dutch?” 

Dutch came to a stop and leaned against the stone, folding his arms as he looked up at Arthur. He waited for a moment, listening for footsteps, then he said in a quiet voice, “Are you really here to lie low, Arthur?” 

“Why else would I be in this hellhole in the middle of nowhere?” Arthur asked, wary. 

Dutch studied his face for a long moment and let out a snort, looking up at the sky. “That’s one thing Hosea always despaired of teaching you, my boy. How to lie convincingly. You got any number of tells.” 

Arthur bit down on his retort, his anger unraveled by unexpected grief. “I miss him,” Arthur said. 

Dutch blinked. “So do I. Every day.” 

“Abigail said Jack cried for days.” Hosea was everyone’s favourite uncle. Or father. 

Something in the cast of Dutch’s face softened. “Ah… that child. Believe you me, I have nothing against him. Or his mother. Even if I’m fairly sure that the key of my chest going conveniently missing had something to do with Miss Roberts.”

“Don’t you mean _our_ chest?” Arthur asked. Dutch curled his lip to bare his teeth. 

“I understand if you hate me now—”

“I don’t. I don’t hate you, Dutch,” Arthur cut in. “I never have, I never will. I can’t. You’re the man I believed in for most of my life, who taught me to read, to shoot, to hunt, ride a horse, everything I know. Also the man who got most of the people I loved killed. Can’t hate you even for that.” When Dutch didn’t say anything, Arthur added, “Micah with you?”

Dutch looked over sharply. “No.” 

“Okay.” Arthur let out a slow breath. “Good.”

“I’ve let that go. I’m starting over.” Dutch made an ironic gesture at the ravine. “New friends and all that. As have you, I see.”

“Kinda.” 

Dutch shook his finger at Arthur. “You never was much of a leader. More of a follower. I think I knows why you’re here. You and John. With as motley a bunch of ‘friends’ as I’ve seen.” 

“Do tell,” Arthur said, trying to sound casual. A rasping step to the side made him tense, then relax as Sadie came around the bend and sauntered up to them, tipping her hat playfully at Dutch. John must’ve gone to fetch her.

“Hello again,” Sadie said with a sharp smile. “Can’t quite stay away?” 

“Ah, Mrs Adler. I was just beginning to think that I was talking to the wrong person, and here you are.” Dutch inclined his head. “Never did thank you for the fine job you did, hiding everyone in the swamp after the Saint Denis job. Finding and extracting John from that penitentiary.” 

“Aww, you’re welcome,” Sadie said, undeterred by the bitterness writ deep in Dutch’s tone. She folded her arms and leaning a hip against the stone. “What d’you want?” 

“I’m thinking Arthur here is easily led by the right sort of leader, and you are a rare woman by any measure,” Dutch said, with a nod at her holsters. “I did hear tell of a lady bounty hunter working the Great Plains.” 

“We was as surprised to see you here as you were us,” Arthur said quickly, before Dutch’s paranoia drew him to the wrong conclusions again.

Dutch sniffed. “That much was obvious. And you’ve also confirmed my suspicions. You’re here for a bounty. Aren’t you, Mrs Adler?”

“Don’t rightly know, Dutch. I’m a stickler for the rules, as much as you are,” Sadie said innocently. 

“The only gangs holed up here now are yours and mine,” Dutch said, “and since you didn’t know I was here, that means you’re here for Cortone.” 

“That charming feller we met in the saloon who asked me out for dinner? I can’t imagine why anyone would want to separate his head from his fine shoulders,” Sadie said. 

“I think we might be able to help each other,” Dutch said, ignoring the sarcasm. “I’m not here to hide out either. I’ve heard that Cortone is sitting on gold. A lot of it.” 

“Sitting on slaves and killer drugs too,” Arthur said. 

Dutch rolled his eyes. “Was that the draw for you, Arthur? Jesus, I don’t know where you caught this big damned hero complex of yours. Either way, whatever you’re here for, we have a problem. None of my people have been able to get far into the caves. Cortone’s got an army in there and it’s a maze, as far as we can tell. For all you know he might collapse the ceiling on the slaves and on the gold if we make a play for it. Or we’d get lost and picked off.”

Sadie was silent for a long moment, tapping at her chin. Berger had reached the same conclusion the other night. “Might be I don’t have much reason to trust you, Dutch.” 

“Do you have a choice?” Dutch shot back. “You want to catch Cortone—preferably alive, if I know how bounties work—free the slaves, and grab the gold, with just the men you have? You’re a capable woman, Sadie Adler, but you ain’t that capable.” 

“I’d like a day to think on it,” Sadie said, “and a promise of no hard feelings if I prefer to do things my own way.”

Dutch smiled at her, baring his teeth. “Take a day. Take as long as you like. But there’re always hard feelings in this business, Mrs Adler. Always.”

#

Berger gave things due thought by sitting quietly through dinner, scribbling into a notebook and occasionally mumbling to himself in French. Foster said curtly “He’s working it out in his head,” when John asked whether Berger was OK. Lee seemed to have decided that he was the only person in camp who could cook. John had no objections. Lee was a better cook than even Pearson anyhow. Hobbs had bought some fine slabs of beef from the ranch and Lee grilled them perfectly near the fire with Sadie’s help.

“Gotten over your aversion to cooking?” Arthur asked as she handed him his portion. 

Sadie made a face at him and handed John his. “Thank you kindly, ma’am,” John said. 

“Why, you’re welcome, John Marston. Unlike certain ungrateful bastards,” Sadie said pertly. Briar chuckled as Arthur sniffed. Hobbs was keeping watch further down the ravine, Foster sitting with Berger. 

“So what’s your story?” John asked Briar. “You really a preacher?”

“Not hardly,” Briar said, though he patted the part of his coat where he had a small bible in an inner pocket. “Not the sort you’re thinking of. But I do strive in my small way to do God’s work upon this earth.” 

“What sort then?” Arthur asked. 

“I was born a slave to parents who were slaves,” Briar said, balancing his plate on his knees. “It became quickly apparent to me that while God is a loving God, a powerful God, He is also a God who now only works through believers and unbelievers alike. Thoughts and prayers alone get nothing done. Only action—righteous action—can haul the ugly arc of this world towards something better. Helping to push the arc is my lot in life.” 

“Righteous action down the barrel of a gun?” John said dryly. 

“Sometimes He has to work in mysterious ways.” Briar ate with graceful delicacy. 

“Don’t believe I’ve ever heard that said in no church,” Arthur said, amused. “The holy people I met in Saint Denis were all about feeding the poor. Though there was one Brother who set me on a trafficker.” 

Briar eyed him keenly. “And did you do God’s work on that trafficker?”

“Wish I did. Bastard got away while I was trying to free the people he chained in his cellar.”

“Why then, God’s work was done regardless. Through you, through the Brother.” Briar beamed. “As his work is being done here and now, through us.”

“Let’s hold that thought,” John said, having had no real patience for God or preachers or the like, “until maybe we’re out of here.” 

“God usually provides,” Briar said amiably. 

“And when He decides to be a complete asshole and fuck things up?” Arthur asked, ignoring Sadie’s warning glance.

Briar laughed. “Well then, may we meet again before the Gates on Judgment Day, my friend.” 

“I know where I’m going if I’m Judged,” Arthur said, finishing his plate and setting it aside.

“How does that work anyway?” John asked, curious now. “I mean. You killed people before, preacher?”

“Unfortunately, yes.” Briar solemnly crossed himself. 

“Pretty sure there’s a bit in the Ten Commandments where you ain’t meant to kill,” John said. Dutch had generally used the Bible to teach John how to read, on account of it being one of the most readily available books around. John had rather liked the Old Testament. It was bloody and fairly entertaining at parts. 

“There’s a distinction between the shedding of innocent blood and killing in the due judgment of a crime,” Briar said, brightening up at the chance of a lecture. “For example, in Exodus, when Moses comes down from the mountain, he commanded the Levites to take up the sword against people who had turned to idolatry.” 

John wrinkled his nose. He’d gone over this part of the Bible a few times because it amused Dutch. “The bit with the golden calf, yeah? Them Levites killed a few thousand people for worshipping it? Bit much if you ask me. Ain’t that like murdering everyone in Saint Denis just because they decided they really liked a statue?” 

There was a stifled laugh from Berger’s end, but when they looked over Berger was still industriously writing into his book. Briar frowned at John. “Are you making light of the Word of God, sir?”

Arthur kicked John in the leg. “Got to forgive him, Briar. He’s got a mouth that he can’t keep shut at the best of times.” 

“Like you’ve ever had cause to complain about my mouth,” John muttered and yelped as he got kicked again. Sadie plopped herself down beside Briar and asked a question about a psalm in a blatant attempt to change the subject. 

“Hell is wrong with you?” Arthur hissed afterward when everyone had called it a night but Sadie, who was taking the first watch. “You wanna get us caught?” 

John pretended to look puzzled and had to bite down on a yelp as Arthur pinned him against a wall. John dragged Arthur down into a kiss to stifle his lecture, rubbing invitingly against him as Arthur rumbled in irritation but kissed him back. Hands slipped tentatively down his back, and Arthur stiffened as John grabbed Arthur’s wrists and pulled those big palms down to his ass. Arthur made a low and inquiring sound as he kneaded. John had to muffle his moans against Arthur’s mouth. Not that he really cared if he got caught. Even if he died now he was gonna die content. 

Arthur walked them back to the bed and sat down, pulling John onto his lap to kiss him. John didn’t even really care to know why Arthur had shifted gears so easy. Hadn’t been that long since the stables in the Fort and John’s confession. Time was compressing maybe, within a job this dangerous. Maybe Arthur looked to court intimacy of any sort at night when he spent the day courting discovery of their plans and death. Maybe Dutch had thrown Arthur for a harder loop than John had even thought. John didn’t care. He was breathing Arthur in, breathing his air. His fingers scraped over Arthur’s unshaven cheeks, curling into his hair. 

If only John had the time to get prepped. Properly stretch himself out. He ground against Arthur as he thought about it. Even with prep it was gonna hurt, taking in someone as big as Arthur. Would be worth it though, worth sitting funny for days. John stifled a whine as Arthur hauled them roughly together, thrusting up against John’s ass. Got messy after that, wasn’t too comfortable neither, rubbing one out against each other with their clothes on.

Arthur grunted and wrestled John down onto the cot, rolling on top of him, knocking their hats off. He tugged at John’s belt and John tried to help him, kicking off his shoes and unbuttoning his pants. Arthur spat in his hand and roughly dragged down John’s drawers, ignoring John’s gasp. He closed his hand around John’s cock, tentative at first, then squeezing as John bucked up and bit down on his fist to stifle his moan. Arthur nosed under his collar and bit down, lazily working in his teeth as John jerked against him, thrusting desperately into Arthur’s grip. Close. Arthur licked up his throat. Kissed his jaw, his ear. Whispered “Easy now, easy,” against John’s cheek, his breath hot, and John buckled right down, twitching as he soiled Arthur’s palm in hot spurts. 

“My turn now,” Arthur said, as John caught his breath, and he grinned as John growled and pushed Arthur onto his back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historical fiction means researching underwear. I know Arthur and John both wear the union suit in canon but personally, I kinda don’t like it for fic purposes haha ^^;;; Undershirt and drawers it is.  
> http://www.memorialhall.mass.edu/activities/dressup/notflash/1900_man.html  
> http://time.com/3661941/vintage-underwear/ lol


	10. Chapter 10

“What happened to not having been born yesterday?” John asked as Sadie adjusted her saddlebag-bruised hat. 

“Shut up, John,” Sadie said. She was in a foul mood and snide comments didn’t help. “Dutch will be at the dinner too.”

“Like that makes me feel any better about the situation,” John said. 

“What _you_ feel about the situation? Think about what I feel,” Sadie snapped. 

John pulled a long face. “You really should bring Arthur. Or me. Hell, bring Baker.” 

“I’m of the opinion that the lady can take care of herself,” Berger said, if from a safe distance across the camp. Arthur merely grunted. He was smoking by the cabin as Sadie was getting ready. 

“Y’all can come get me if I ain’t home by midnight, glass slippers and all,” Sadie said sarcastically. At John’s blank look, Sadie said, “Cinderella?”

“Who?” John asked. 

“Never you mind.” Sadie pretended to busy herself with her dress. “Now where’s my goddamned escort?” 

Briar whistled from the ravine. Dutch trotted into view on the Count’s back, tidy in a fine suit. He stopped at a safe distance. “My lady, our soiree awaits,” Dutch said with a sardonic smirk. He studied the camp with a calculating eye. 

“There you are.” Sadie cursed as she pulled herself up onto Missy. She’d learned to hate riding side-saddle. 

As she nudged Missy out of the camp, Arthur said, “Dutch. You keep her safe now.” 

Dutch rolled his eyes. “Shut up, Arthur,” Sadie said, exasperated. “Jesus.” 

“Yes, yes, you have my word,” Dutch said. He turned the Count around and headed briskly out of the ravine with Missy keeping pace behind him. “Your people already in place?” Dutch asked. 

“Yeah.” Hobbs was sneaking around up top somewhere and Lee said she was going to get in through the back. Descriptions had been shared. “Try not to have your people shoot them by accident. I find that kinda thing depressing.” 

Dutch shot her a look that actually seemed amused. “Do you know, for all our differences, I am proud of you, Mrs Adler. This world is unkind to women and it’s always a pleasure to see one rise above the narrow rules it sets for them.” 

“Just as long as we ain’t too loud, eh? Or we get a shotgun blast to the chest.” 

Dutch let out a sharp laugh. “Oh, you’re cannier than Miss O’Shea or Mrs Grimshaw. Pity you have to hide behind Arthur in order to be taken seriously.” 

“Do I look much like I’m hiding to you? In this hat? ‘Sides, Arthur tells me he’s used to people hiding behind him. You should know. You’ve done it yourself.” Sadie smirked at Dutch. His gloved hands tightened briefly on the Count’s reins. “Anyways. This is just meant to be a nice little get-together. So let’s try to keep the body count down, all right?” 

“Just dinner, no trouble?” Dutch quoted the words Sadie had fed him when she’d ventured over to his camp to ask him on the venture. “I’m surprised that you asked me along.” 

“We’re working together now, ain’t we? Back to being friends and all. This here be the best way to get into the caves for a look-see.” Berger hadn’t been happy about agreeing to Dutch’s proposal, but _not_ agreeing had no good outcomes that he could see, he said. Dutch had agreed to split the gold for a share of the bounty, and help with any rescue efforts. Not that Sadie would count on him for the latter, but at least maybe Dutch wouldn’t be getting into their way. 

Hopefully.

“Why not ask Arthur?”

“I’m fond of Arthur, I really am, but he’s good at some things and mighty bad at other things. You’re more charming than he is. We don’t want Mister Cortone to feel like he maybe should start hiding all his family silver. I told him this was a social call.”

Dutch shot her a darkly amused look. “You’ve never been afraid of dying and you know this is dangerous. You’d rather it was me beside you if it goes sideways than Arthur or John.”

“Well, I was thinking, if things do go wrong and you’re there too, maybe both our gangs will come and get us, eh?” Sadie winked at him. “Unless you’ve pissed off your people already.” 

“As hard as it may be for you to get, I am capable of finding friends who don’t secretly want me dead, Mrs Adler.” Dutch glowered at her. 

“And as hard as it might be for _you_ to get, I don’t wish you ill will and never have, Dutch,” Sadie said, staring evenly at him. “You saved me once when you could’a left me to die. When you was hungry, you fed me too. I remember.” 

Dutch blinked. He looked away. “I’m glad we got to watch Colm hang,” he said quietly.

“I’m glad you was there with me,” Sadie said, even though it had been Dutch’s hatred of Colm that had brought Dutch to Saint Denis with her. Dutch nodded curtly. They cut through the town in silence, through to where the valley started to narrow back down. It fed into a mouth of a cavern, hung with lanterns. Men with rifles lined the entrance and Sadie could pick out sentries on the roof. Cortone was making a show of strength out front, just as Berger hoped he would.

Cortone was standing at the entrance, smiling. “If he tries to help me off my horse I’m probably gonna kick him,” Sadie whispered, even as she smiled in return. Dutch nodded. As they got close he dismounted quickly and helped Sadie off her horse before Cortone could get to them. Sadie curled her hand in the crook of Dutch’s arm as they walked the rest of the distance, stablehands taking the reins of their horses. 

“Mister Van der Linde. And Mrs Adler.” Cortone walked over to shake Dutch’s hand. He tried to turn Sadie’s hand up to kiss her wrist, but she grabbed his palm instead and shook it firmly.

“Thanks for inviting us to dinner, Mister Cortone,” Sadie said. 

“Call me Daniel. We are, after all, engaged in a common enterprise.” A flash of irritation had crossed Cortone’s face, but he was smiling in the next, turning to usher them into the cave. 

“And what enterprise might that be, sir?” Dutch asked. 

“Our continued disengagement with the unforgiving machineries of the law,” Cortone said. He smirked. 

“I’d drink to that,” Sadie said. She nearly stumbled as she walked onto plush carpeting. Some poor souls had been tasked with carpeting the floor of the cave and lining the walls with lanterns. 

Cortone caught her surprise. “I don’t have the pleasure of having guests often. Forgive me my indulgences. Now, I don’t wish to be rude, but weapons will have to be left with Mister Worth over here.” 

Dutch raised his arms. “No weapons, as you can see. Feel free to pat me down.”

“Don’t mind if we do,” Cortone said, nodding at a lean man with a scarred mouth. He stepped over and politely patted Dutch down, checking under his suit. Worth stepped aside and nodded. “Mrs Adler?” 

“You wouldn’t search a lady, would you?” Sadie said, with a coquettish grin. 

“I wouldn’t like to insist, but I’m afraid I’d have to,” Cortone said, with what looked like genuine regret. Dutch looked frozen in between objecting and keeping his peace, glancing between Sadie and Cortone. 

“Oh, all right. Only because we’re all friends now. But Dutch here can tell you I don’t much like being unarmed no more.” Sadie made a show of hitching up her dress, handing over the little ladies’ derringer holstered at her ankle. She handed it over to Worth with a bright smile. “It’s my mum’s, so I’d like it back please.”

“Mister Worth will guard it with his life,” Cortone said. He waved them on. “Now that all the niceties are over and done with, this way.” 

Sadie hooked her hand back into Dutch’s arm and smiled sweetly at him when he gave her a sidelong stare. The caves bisected into intersections the deeper they went, some natural, some clearly cut into the stone. “How far does it go?” Sadie asked, genuinely impressed. “Looks like this used to be some kinda mine?” 

“A long time ago,” Cortone said, guarded. 

“That ain’t dangerous, is it? I mean, it probably ain’t, since you boys are living in here. But I heard about mines and canaries. Y’know, little birds dropping dead?” Sadie pretended to sound a little worried. 

Cortone relaxed. “Ah. No, no. There’s no danger at all. We’ve dug rather extensively through here and haven’t found any pockets of bad gas.” 

“Wouldn’t mind a tour if it’s safe. I ain’t ever been in a mine before,” Sadie said.

“Now, Sadie, we’re presuming enough on Mister Cortone’s hospitality,” Dutch told her reproachfully. 

“Not at all. I’d be happy to show the both of you around. After all, as you said, we’re all friends now.” Cortone smiled broadly.

“Why, that’s mighty kind of you, Mister Cortone,” Sadie said. She made a show of looking around. “A friend told me, sometimes deep caves have got strange creatures. Things that glow, huge spiders, blind fish. It’s a curious world.” 

“Nothing so exciting in—” Cortone hesitated as one of the gunmen escorting them whispered in his ear. “Ah, Rory here says that actually, there is an underground river in one of the chambers that has got such fish. Perhaps after dinner we could all go and have a look.” 

“I had a good friend once who would’ve loved to see such a thing,” Dutch said, a little wistfully. 

“Maybe we could catch one in his memory. Or see one,” Sadie said, and smiled at Cortone. “If it ain’t no trouble of course.” 

“It’ll be a pleasure,” Cortone said, lingering over the last word in a way that made Sadie grip Dutch’s arm a little tighter. 

Dinner was served in what looked like part of Cortone’s personal chambers, a section of the caves that had fine furnishings and carpets. There were even framed pieces of art lining the stone, lit up by elaborate lantern brackets. The dining table must’ve been a right feat to manhandle down here, a monster of a thing in dark wood with carved legs. Someone had made a token attempt to drape it with a tablecloth. There were three table settings, with plates and silverware. 

Sadie looked dubiously at the number of spoons, forks, and knives. “You start from the outside and work your way in,” Dutch said. He sounded a little amused. Smug bastard. 

“I might maybe understand the knives, but what the hell is the point of having so many forks of different sizes?” Sadie asked, suspicious. “Or a big spoon and a little spoon?” 

“Do forgive my associate her ignorance,” Dutch told Cortone with mock regret. 

“Oh, we be only _associates_ now, are we?” Sadie said dryly. “I knows you don’t normally do fine dinners with plenty of spoons neither, Dutch van der Linde.” 

Cortone chuckled, shaking his head. “No forgiveness necessary. I was originally intending to just have an informal dinner between friends, but as I said, I hardly ever have the pleasure of guests. Feel free to use whatever piece of cutlery you like.” He clapped his hands. There was a long pause, then a Chinese woman in sober clothes shuffled in, eyes downcast, balancing a tray with bowls of soup. She avoided their eyes as she served the soup, then she bowed and left the room quickly. 

“Something the matter, Mrs Adler?” Cortone asked. Sadie hadn’t been able to keep her expression blank, then. 

“Don’t see many of them around these parts,” Dutch said, with a nod at the exit. “Chinese women, that is.” 

“Not since the Exclusion Act, no. I’ve heard that’s to be made permanent any time now. So they’re gonna be a bit of a rarity of sorts in this part of the world, which will drive up demand,” Cortone said. He picked up a spoon. “Eat, eat. Enjoy yourselves. Wine?” 

Wine was served. Sadie ate mechanically. Dutch looked so relaxed, joking with Cortone as he discussed old exploits. Sadie wished she could switch gears like that, rather than worry about how Lee and the others were doing. Rather than get pissed off at Cortone. Sadie calmed herself by pleasantly imagining Lee shooting Cortone in the head and joined in by ribbing Dutch whenever she got the chance. 

Steak was being served when a guard let himself into the room, looking harried. He bent to whisper something into Cortone’s ear that made Cortone blink, then start to frown. Cortone waved him away and forced a smile. “It appears something may have come up that requires my immediate attention. Please, continue to enjoy yourselves.” 

“We can do this some other time,” Dutch said, setting down his knife. “Don’t want to be no trouble.” 

“No trouble at all. I might even be back.” Cortone rose to his feet. His friendly expression had gone neutral. Something had definitely gone wrong. Dutch’s people, maybe? 

“You need help of some kind?” Sadie asked. “Maybe we could go with you? Or—”

“The two of you will stay here. Until this little wrinkle is sorted out to everyone’s satisfaction.” Cortone turned and strode out of the door, which was closed behind him. 

Sadie glared at Dutch, who scowled at the door. “That’s not good,” Sadie hissed. 

“You don’t say,” Dutch shot back in a whisper. “One of your people must’ve made a mistake.”

“Or yours!”

“Do you really want to argue about this right now?” 

“They left us them dinner knives,” Sadie said. She hiked up her dress under the table, fumbling. 

“Silver knives against shotguns, great odds,” Dutch growled, looking around the room. “This was really too much of a gamble…” He trailed off as Sadie dropped a Schofield into his lap under the table. 

“I wants that back.” At his blink, Sadie admitted reluctantly, “You’re a better shot than I am.” 

Dutch stifled a laugh, his eyes crinkling behind the hand he used to cover his mouth. “Ain’t you a breath of fresh air.” 

“People like Cortone are gonna look at a woman in a dress and think she can’t be packing more than one of those useless ‘ladies’ guns’,” Sadie said. She palmed throwing knives out of her shoes and showed them briefly to Dutch. “This is all I got. You want to take the lead on this?” 

Dutch nodded, though he quietly took a grip of the Schofield under the table. “Just stay calm for now. It might all be a misunderstanding.” He didn’t sound confident of that though, and stared as Sadie cut into her steak. “You can still eat?”

“What? This is really good prime cut. You don’t want yours?” Dutch wordlessly nudged his plate towards her. “Suit yourself,” Sadie said. She’d rather die on a full stomach, if it came to that. 

She’d polished off her plate and was working on Dutch’s when the doors were pushed back open. Dutch tensed, but nobody came in guns blazing—it was Worth, motioning for them to get up and follow. “Mister Cortone extends his apologies,” Worth said gruffly. “You people should leave. I’ll bring you out to your horses.” 

“Why, what happened? Is he all right?” Sadie asked. 

“Business,” Worth said. He gestured sharply and headed for the door. Sadie got to her feet. Dutch had already made her Schofield disappear—it was probably tucked into his belt behind his back, under his dinner coat. 

“Aww, I was looking forward to dessert,” Sadie said.

“Sadie,” Dutch said, pretending at reproach as he got to his feet. “Do tell Mister Cortone that this has been a lovely evening.”

“Sure,” Worth said flatly. He started to lead them down the tunnel. Guards were scarcer on the ground. The caves were a maze, and Worth was walking briskly enough that Sadie was getting a little disoriented. Left. Right. 

“Are we heading to see the cave fish then?” Dutch asked. 

“No,” Worth said. 

“Scenic route?” Dutch sounded relaxed, but he was looking over his shoulder. 

“Ain’t we heading back through to the front?” Sadie demanded. “I’m real fond of my horse, by the way.” 

Worth stopped walking. “This ain’t a good time to be difficult, Miss,” he growled, turning around and drawing his gun. Before he could clear it from the holster, Sadie threw the knife in her hand. It gashed open his cheek instead of burying itself in his throat—but even as Worth clapped his hands instinctively to his face Dutch had pounced. Worth wheezed instead of yelling, scrabbling at Dutch’s arm around his throat. Eventually, he stopped kicking. 

“Really?” Dutch told Sadie. He was liberally stained with Worth’s blood. Facial wounds bled a lot. 

Sadie had never really gotten the hang of throwing knives. “My hand slipped?” 

Dutch shook his head. He pocketed the knife and returned Sadie her Schofield, strapping Worth’s gunbelt and Cattleman onto his waist. Patted down the body until he found the tiny derringer, which he passed over too. “That really your mother’s?” Dutch asked.

“Yeah. Hell lot of good it did her at the end.” Sadie tucked the derringer away. “Now what?” 

Dutch smiled, his eyes hard. He held up a folded piece of paper from Worth’s vest—a hand-drawn map of the caves. “I think we should lodge a personal complaint with Cortone over the quality of the dinner service, Mrs Adler.” 

“This was meant to be just a social call,” Sadie said, though she couldn’t help but grin sharply in return. 

“I don’t believe Mister Worth was leading us anywhere good,” Dutch said, with a nod towards the winding corridor beyond. “And besides, not to belabour the point, but you threw a knife at him. That tends to put an abrupt end to any social niceties, in my experience.” 

“You’re the one who strangled him to death.”

“If you want to make sure of his good intentions, be my guest.” Dutch gestured down the tunnel.

Oh, what the hell. Hopefully, Berger or Arthur would realise something was up. “Nah. Bastard drew on us first. All right then. Let’s go make some trouble.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Méliès’ Cinderella film was first released in December 1899 in the USA, which was probably how Sadie would’ve caught it. 
> 
> Lol I cannot believe I had to look this up but http://etiquipedia.blogspot.com/2014/04/a-brief-history-of-dining-customs-and.html
> 
> Had to rework a portion of this story because I realized the modern steak knife was only a thing after WWII… https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gear/a28421/history-of-steak-knives/


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a two chapter update :)

“I had extremely low expectations that this night was going to end without any violence,” Berger said when Foster slipped down the ravine and told them that he’d heard gunshots from the caves. 

“Well, why didn’t you say something? Didn’t you think that ‘the lady can take care of herself’?” John scowled. 

Berger stared at him with mild surprise. “That opinion hasn’t changed. In any case, I’m going to take Foster and Briar and try to engage Cortone’s forces through the front. We’ll bring Dutch’s men if they’d come with us. The two of you take Lee’s map. Get in through the river entrance. Try not to break your necks.” He handed Arthur a piece of paper from his vest. 

“Sentries?” Arthur asked. 

Berger shrugged. “Sneak past them or kill them, it’s up to you.” 

John cursed quietly as they climbed up the ravine. Both of them had never been very good at climbing anything—it was frustrating going, with a few awkward slips. When they finally got up top, Arthur was a little out of breath. “Probably should’ve swapped with Foster and Briar,” he grumbled as they hurried over the mesa. 

“I don’t know Foster and Briar well enough to trust them to get through the back with just the two of them,” John said. Arthur checked the map as they went. Took out the first sentry with an arrow—man wasn’t even looking in their direction. They jogged on, trying not to run. Kept an eye out and watched their feet. At least it wasn’t a cloudy night, but there was still a pretty good goddamned chance of them both breaking their necks. 

“This is a real bad idea,” Arthur muttered at the second time John nearly slipped into a chasm. 

“You got better ones?” 

“That’s the problem. No.”

“It’ll be fine. Sadie’s tough. And she’s got Dutch with her.” 

“That’s supposed to make me feel better?” Arthur asked, if half-heartedly. He couldn’t predict Dutch any longer. The old Dutch—or at least, the Dutch Arthur thought he knew before Blackwater—would’ve taken a bullet for anyone in the gang. The new one might push her right into it. Or leave her dying. Arthur set his jaw and sped up. He was sweating and wheezing by the time they finally came within sight of the river entrance.

“Right then,” John said, shooting the drop a resigned look. “I s’pose if we take it easy and slow—” The rest of his words were drowned out with the sound of snorting horses and hooves and the rattling of a speeding wagon. Arthur just had time to unsling his Lancaster when a wagon burst out from beside the river, hauled by snorting draft horses. There were women packed tightly into the back, screaming, curled down with their hands over their heads. One was driving the wagon. Beside her was Lee, twisted in his seat, Mauser in hand and firing over his shoulder. Someone screamed in the tunnel.

“Shit!” Arthur hastily knelt down, taking aim. 

John waved at Lee as he glanced up at them and he turned his attention back to the cave. Men charged out on horseback, spurring their horses toward the wagon. Arthur took in a breath, concentrated, fired. The rifle kicked his shoulder and the leading horseman fell out of his saddle with a dying scream. John’s bolt action rifle barked beside Arthur. The second horseman jerked in his saddle but kept riding, only for Lee to fire a shot that took him in the throat. 

“What happened to just having a look?” John muttered. 

“Concentrate on shooting,” Arthur snapped. He picked off another horseman, then cursed as his next shot went wide. Riders were gaining on the wagon. Lee shot one in the face when he got too close, but the next jumped onto the wagon, grappling with him. 

“Aw, hell.” Too tangled up to shoot. Arthur shot the next horseman that closed in and cursed at the sound of a familiar harsh crack from the cave below. Rolling block fire. “I’m gonna have to get down there,” Arthur told John. “Cover me from here if you can, but make sure nobody else gets near that wagon.”

John nodded. On the wagon, the scuffle had gone in Lee’s favour—he kicked the other man off and shot him as he fell. Arthur slung his repeater across his back and concentrated on climbing down without falling and breaking his neck. His hands felt clammy, his breaths thin. Nope, running around on top of the mesa wasn’t the worst thing he’d ever done. This was. John fired another shot. Behind Arthur, on the grass, someone yelled and a horse squealed. The ground looked real far down. Arthur tried to find his next handhold and bit down on a yelp as a ledge he grabbed for crumbled under his grip. 

Somehow he managed the presence of mind to grab his knife and stab it into the stone. Rocks scraped up under his palms as his weight tore him down the stone anyway, until the knife finally caught and he was jarred to a stop. A bullet whined past his ear. Arthur flinched back on instinct and dislodged himself. His stomach dropped for a moment as he fell, weightless—but only for a short distance. Landing awkwardly on his flank, Arthur scrambled to draw his Schofield. Hyper-aware, he breathed, caught a glimpse of a man peering behind a pillar of stone, fired. 

The man’s head snapped back in a spray of blood. Arthur flattened himself against the stone, sheathing his knife and drawing his second Schofield. Just in time—a horseman thundered past. Arthur emptied several rounds into his back. Took in a breath and peeked around the side of the entrance. The man with the rolling block rifle was taking careful aim. Arthur put a couple of rounds in his chest and ducked into the cave, crabbing behind a pillar, ears ringing dully from the loud barks of his guns. The river roared by beside him, cutting a fast-moving channel between the narrow ledge Arthur was on the wider platform on the other side, wide enough for a wagon. Another guard jerked back as Arthur shot him through the head, falling into the river. This was gonna be a real slog. Wasn’t much light but for a few lanterns strung in the cave. 

John made it down with a string of ugly curses when Arthur had cleared out the cave and was patting down a body for spare ammunition. “‘Bout time you showed up,” Arthur said, straightening up. 

“Fuck you too, Arthur.” John was only slightly out of breath. “Lee got away fine, I think.” 

“He won’t go far. Doubt that wagon had supplies.” Lee would probably get clear, find somewhere to hide the wagon and the women, then turn around in the morning and head back on one of the wagon horses to investigate. That was what Arthur would’ve done, anyhow. “Best we keep them too busy on this end to go after them—” 

“Watch out!” John grabbed Arthur and dragged him sideways. They both landed in the river, which was surprisingly deep. Something exploded overhead in a blast of fire and light. John was already swimming back up, coughing in the smoke and cordite. Horses thundered past, four fine ones. No time for finesse. Arthur hauled himself out of the water and emptied all his rounds in their direction. One of the horses in front screamed, falling and thrashing, catching the others behind it as it kicked. The horseman in front kept going. It was Cortone. 

“John!” Arthur yelled. He was too winded himself to catch them. John scrambled up onto the wide ledge and sprinted for the horses, firing as he went. He leaped onto one horse’s back and dragged the dying man off, then spurred the horse free of the tangle, urging it into a gallop after Cortone. Arthur reloaded. Shot the survivor and the dying horse and hesitated. He could head after John. Or trust John to deal with Cortone and keep looking for Sadie. 

Well. John could probably handle Cortone. And at most, Lee was still out there too. Arthur grimaced at the wet clothes sticking to his frame and kept walking. What a goddamned mess. The hell had gone wrong anyway? 

Maybe it was just Arthur’s luck again. Things had a way of going completely sideways in just about anything he did nowadays.

The world made up his mind for him. More horses were coming. Arthur holstered his pistols and pulled his pump-action shotgun from his back, hoping it was dry enough to fire. The first horse that galloped down the ramp got a blast to the throat and went down instantly. The horses behind reared with screams that Arthur couldn’t hear from the dull ringing in his ears from the blast. One rider got thrown. Arthur fired again into the scrum. Desperate horses turned tail and fled back up the tunnel or jumped wild-eyed into the water. Arthur dropped his shotgun and drew a Schofield, breathing in. Steadied his aim. Picked off the riders who remained. 

Shotgun back in hand, Arthur picked through the blood and meat and forged up through the tunnel. He’d have to keep pursuit from going after John and Lee. 

Pain seared through Arthur’s shoulder as he got to a wide slope. He’d been shot. No cover. He fired through the agony, catching a man in his shoulder. Fired again at the man as he got closer, through the face. Arthur flattened himself against a stone pillar, breathing hard and checking his wound. He was bleeding into his coat. Bullet looked like it had gone clean through. Cursing to himself, Arthur fumbled for a bottle of tonic. It’d numb the pain. He swallowed the bitter liquid down, coughed, and reloaded. 

Next up was a big cavern that was used as a stable. It stank of horses so thickly that Arthur got dizzy just breathing it in. He pulled his mask over his face and stumbled through. Horses were whinnying and kicking their stalls in fright. Arthur let them all out, chasing them towards the ramp where they fled out in a stampede. Shot a couple of men who charged in at the back to stop him. Breathed. Getting lightheaded was a bad sign. 

Staggering over to a lantern, Arthur heated his knife in the flame and stripped off his coat and vest. He pulled his shirt and undershirt open, sucking in a breath. Cauterising wounds always hurt like a goddamned bitch, and Arthur was never fond of the smell of his own burning flesh neither. Had to be done though. He set his clothes back to rights, drank whiskey for the pain from a hip flask and kept going. 

Arthur found Hobbs in a chamber some turns past the stables. What was left of him, anyhow. Poor bastard must’ve been caught up top. He was tied to a chair and had been worked over with a knife. As Arthur checked his pulse, Hobbs moaned. Gut wound. Bad sign. “Hey, uh.” Arthur wasn’t entirely sure what to say. “You hang in there.”

Hobbs let out a hoarse, gurgling laugh. One of his eyes had swelled shut. “I didn’t tell them nothing,” he whispered.

“Good.”

“Somebody shot me. In the back. When I was trying to. Take out the sentry.” Hobbs spoke in low, panting gasps. His remaining eye was wild. “Think… think they were ready for us.” 

Had Dutch’s men…? “Yeah well. That hasn’t worked out so well for them so far. C’mon. I’ll get you to a horse.” 

Hobbs laughed hoarsely. “I ain’t gonna last and I ain’t gonna spend weeks dying like this. Carry me to the corridor and give me a gun. I’ll keep watch for as long as I can.” 

Arthur nodded. Wasn’t his place to dictate how somebody else wanted to die. He supported Hobbs as gently as he could to the main corridor and found a spare pistol for him. Propped Hobbs against the wall and handed him a hip flask he took off one of the bodies. “Sorry,” Arthur said.

“My Maddie always did say I liked gambling too much for my own health.” Hobbs grinned through bloody teeth. “Go, man. Go!” 

Arthur went. Berger’s distraction had to be going well. Arthur ran into fewer and fewer guards as he tried to guess his way through the tunnels. Place was still a goddamned maze. Arthur got turned around a few times, cursing each time that he did. As he stopped to catch his breath at another dead end, he heard a muffled but distinctive yell of rage.

Sadie. 

“Sadie!” Arthur called. He pushed away from the wall and stumbled back out to the corridor. His shoulder ached with a vengeance. “Sadie!” 

There was another yell. Arthur charged down a corridor, trying to follow the gunshots. He barrelled into some kinda shared sleeping quarters just in time to see Sadie peek out from a bunk and shoot someone through the door. She scowled as she glanced back and recognised him. “Took your time getting here, didn’t you?”

“Where’s Dutch?”

“We got separated. Some of the tunnels ‘round here have got traps. They tried to drop the ceiling on us. Real nice folk.” Sadie’s dress was ripped, and she had a scraped arm, but she looked otherwise fine. She studied him. “Well, you look like hell. Again.” 

“I’ll keep. Ready to get out of here?”

“From the map I saw there’s a way up top ‘round here.” Sadie rose cautiously from cover. “C’mon. You find the others?”

“John rode out after Cortone. Lee rescued a wagon of women. Hobbs didn’t exactly make it.” Arthur told Sadie about what had happened to Hobbs as they found a side room with a ladder up. The mesa up top looked empty. They were somewhere close to scattered gunfire. Sadie started to walk towards it, reloading her pistol from ammo that Arthur handed over. 

They peered out over the edge of the cliff overlooking the entrance to the cave. The fight at the entrance was already over. Judging from the bodies and the lack of guards stationed anywhere it looked like the battle had probably gone Berger’s way.

“Or maybe everyone’s dead,” Sadie said, when Arthur offered her this opinion. 

“Don’t think we ever get that lucky.” 

Sadie shot him a startled look. “You want Berger dead?”

“Didn’t you start off this business hoping that he’d get conveniently shot?” 

“Well, that was then. Lee’s kinda fond of him and I’m getting kinda fond of Lee so I guess it’s a sort of secondhand concern at this point,” Sadie said. 

“Fond of Lee, huh?” Arthur said. Maybe he could see how that might go, even if Lee wasn’t even as tall as Sadie and looked slighter at that. 

“Fuck off, it ain’t like that.” 

“Yeah? That why you two go walking about so often?” 

Sadie smacked Arthur on the shoulder with a scowl. She opened her mouth to cuss him out and went still at the sound of footsteps from further below. Berger, Foster, and Briar were walking out of the cave with their hands up. Foster was limping. Men were chivvying them along, forcing them to their knees at gunpoint once they were clear of the cave. 

“Ahh shit,” Arthur whispered. 

Sadie grimaced. “If John has got Cortone maybe we could do an exch—”

“Those ain’t Cortone’s men.” Arthur watched grimly as a familiar man sauntered out from the cave, thumbs in his belt. Dutch. He circled around in front of Berger, his footsteps ringing in the stillness of the valley. 

“I’m a little disappointed,” Dutch said as he paced slowly back and forth. “The last time I met a Pinkerton, you people came at me with an army. You coming here with just seven other people is kinda insulting, to tell the truth.” 

“Pinkerton?” Berger said. 

Dutch sighed. The man behind Berger hit him across the head with the butt of his rifle, knocking him into the dirt. Foster tried to start to his feet, only to get shoved back down. “Pinkerton, Pinkerton contractor, whatever you like to be called. The fact is, Mister Berger—yes, I know who you are. D’you think I wouldn’t familiarise myself with all the big-time bounty hunters working in these parts? Especially if they’ve been inquiring around about me?” 

Berger laughed. Arthur had to give the man that—he had balls. “I suppose I owe certain people in Hell an apology,” Berger said, in his normal French accent. “If you know who I am, then why bother with this pantomime?” 

“As I was saying,” Dutch said, annoyed, “the fact is, I’m surprised that you managed to turn my boys to your cause. Given that your people have been the source of all our ills for a while. Or has the rot just set in with all of them for a while?” 

“Morgan and Marston?” Berger chuckled, pushing himself up from the dirt. “The way I hear it, the Pinkertons weren’t the issue, Dutch. You were.” 

“Sadie,” Arthur hissed, as Sadie started creeping along the ledge. 

“You got a stick of dynamite?” Sadie whispered. “Toss it here.”

“Why?”

“Just toss it here, damnit.” Sadie caught the stick as Arthur threw it to her from his belt. “Get ready.”

“For what?” Arthur whispered, but Sadie had already scuttled quickly over to the cliff overlooking the cave entrance. 

Sadie lit up the dynamite with a match and yelled, “Hey Dutch. Catch!” The dynamite turned in the air as it fell, men yelping and scattering instinctively out of the way below.

“Shit!” Arthur drew from the hip and shot the guy holding Berger at gunpoint just as the dynamite went off right in front of the cave. Sadie sprinted back around the side, firing at people ducking for cover as Briar hauled Foster up onto his shoulder and started running down the valley. Berger grabbed a pistol, returning fire. Dutch—Dutch was standing in the partially collapsed entrance to the caves, staring up at them with his teeth bared and his hands clenched in rage and hatred. Then he turned around and walked away into the dark. 

Arthur managed to pick off a couple of Dutch’s men as they covered Berger’s escape down the valley into the town. The town stayed quiet as Briar huffed to a stop and let Foster down. No pursuit on their way to the ravine, where Berger helped Foster onto a horse as Arthur and Sadie climbed carefully down. 

“I liked Missy,” Sadie complained as she got onto Hobbs’ horse, leading Lee’s behind her. “What the hell happened?” 

“According to Dutch, he’s known who I was for days and doesn’t much care for Pinkertons and their associates,” Berger said with a grimace, “and as such agreed to Sadie’s plan in order to get in to the caves, but told his men to make trouble. Think he hoped that we’d get ourselves killed trying to stage a rescue. When we didn’t, he tried to finish the job himself.” 

“Messy,” Arthur said as they rode out of the ravine. A risky plan like that wouldn’t have been what Arthur would call a typical Dutch plan. Not before Blackwater. Now it seemed like opportunistic, insane plans with a high risk of death were what Dutch liked best. “What about the gold?” 

Berger laughed. “What gold?”

“Cortone’s?” Sadie said. “We just leaving all of it to Dutch?” 

“I might have made that up,” Berger said, spurring his horse into a gallop as the ravine widened. “Spread the rumour around in the appropriate venues and such.” 

“What?” Arthur said, shocked. Foster sniffed even as Briar started to chuckle.

“I was hoping that some large outlaw gang would do me a favour and chase Cortone out of the Pass so that I could catch him somewhere less fortified. I suppose it worked? If in an inconvenient fashion at the end,” Berger said. 

Arthur passed his hand slowly over his face. “I should just fucking shoot you right now.” 

Sadie started to laugh, long and loud. “The Hammer boys believed there was gold. Dutch, too.”

“I didn’t,” Foster said sourly, “I know Mister Berger all too well.” 

“In any regard, I never said how much gold there was in there. There likely was gold in some form or other, and you people would’ve been welcome to a share of it,” Berger said primly. “Mrs Adler actually put a finger on the flaw in my story very early on. It’s true, by the way, that Mister Cortone thinks currency is a hallucination of the masses. Which is why all his money is actually sunk into livestock and property.” 

“No wonder you didn’t have a goddamned getaway plan,” Arthur said with a groan. “Gold is heavy and we didn’t come here with no wagon. You’d better hope John caught Cortone, or this is gonna be one hell of a wasted trip. Or is the big bounty a story as well?”

“That part is real,” Berger said, looking mildly offended. “What do you take me for, Morgan? I’m a professional. I don’t work for small change.”

“… Every time I get to know a Frenchman I feel this urge to go to Paris to set things on fire,” Arthur muttered.

Berger sniffed. “Have at it. It might even be an improvement. On the smell.” 

Sadie updated Berger on what had happened as they rode out of Dead Man’s Pass and onto the plains. Once they got clear, Briar let out a shout and waved. A couple of specks and a wagon were coming their way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m sad to admit sometimes I really cbf chasing down someone on horseback so I just shoot the horse… q_q sorry horsies. Click on for the last chapter~~


	12. Chapter 12

epilogue

Lee

“You don’t wanna watch him hang after all that?” Sadie asked. The other women were getting changed behind the wagon into clean clothes that Sadie and Berger had bought from Stranger. They’d pretty much bought all available stock from the general store.

“He isn’t going to hang,” Lee said. Cortone was still tied on the back of his horse, looking defeated. The men were keeping watch close by. 

“What? What even was the point then?” Sadie blinked.

“Cortone’s been smart. Everything done through intermediaries. Money laundered clean through other businesses. If he was put on trial he’d be able to get the best lawyers. Pay off lawmen, maybe even a judge. This was a private bounty,” Lee said. She smiled thinly. “Besides, he’s already dead.”

Sadie glanced over. “Looks like he’s still breathing to me.” 

“Didn’t you see Berger inject him this morning?” 

Berger had decided that it was ‘about time’ since they were close enough to their destination. Had whispered something to Cortone that had made him try to jerk away and scream. Arthur and Briar had held him down. “Thought that was something to keep him calm.” 

“No.” Lee’s smile widened. “It’s the same contaminated opium that he sold to the dens. He’ll start to rot away from the inside. Soon, from the outside as well.”

Sadie whistled. “Poetic.” 

“Anyway, Berger’s delivering him to a ranch owned by one of the families that posted the bounty. You’d get paid then.”

“What about you?” Sadie asked. 

Lee nodded at the wagon. “I’m going to take these people to Boston. To a certain home near there. After that, we’ll see. Berger will send me my share.” 

“Need company heading up?”

“We’ll manage,” Lee said. She looked over at Berger and back to Sadie. “Perhaps someday we’ll meet again.” 

“If you ever get tired of working for an asshole, look me up,” Sadie said, with a cheeky grin. She shook Lee’s hand, clasping it tightly. Lee nodded and climbed up onto the wagon. Tipped down her hat and waited for the rest to finish getting dressed and climb on. Sadie and the others waved as Lee drove the wagon towards the trail, her horse trotting along behind her. 

Once they were out of sight, the other women started whispering to each other in Cantonese. One of the older women started to sing, some clapping along, some silent. Most of them were still in disbelief that they’d been rescued. A couple were numbed into silence, their eyes huge and blank. 

The youngest girl was skinny, her wrists bony twigs that stuck out of the folded sleeves of her oversized dress. She was sitting beside Lee, looking around alertly. “How long did it take you to learn how to shoot the way you do?” she asked in accented English. 

Lee glanced at her. Mei, that was the girl’s name. “Why do you ask?” 

Mei met her stare, her eyes hard with a bitter rage that Lee recognised. She’d seen the same before. Still did, some days, when she looked into a mirror. “I want you to teach me how,” Mei said, the same words that Lee had once told another, a friend who had come to her when she had no one. 

“We need to get everyone safely to Boston.”

“After that?” 

“After that, we’ll see,” Lee said, because the life she had was not for everyone. Mei nodded tightly, as though Lee had agreed and the matter was settled. Lee hid a smile. She’d done that too, another lifetime ago.

Briar and Foster

Berger split the payment after they delivered the dying man to the sprawling ranch. As they rode out, Arthur and John both studied the sleek cattle with a far-too-practiced eye. “Don’t any of you start,” Sadie warned.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Arthur said.

“Not in present company anyhow,” John said and sidestepped his horse out of reach as Arthur glowered at him. 

“Thou shalt not steal,” Briar told them, though he was more amused than disapproving. He wasn’t so sure about John, but in Arthur, Briar sensed the makings of a good man, one struggling against his own sins. 

“We’re well beyond that point, preacher,” John said. 

Once back on the trail, Berger turned his horse around. “Good luck one and all,” he said, bowing from the hip. “I’d like to say it was a pleasure, even if it was messier than I would’ve liked.” 

“I hope never to see your weaselly face again,” Arthur said, though he smirked and John chuckled.

“You still owe us that favour,” Sadie told him. 

“Yes, yes, I will be heading up north next. To update certain Pinkerton records. Particularly with regards to Dutch’s last known location,” Berger said, wrinkling his nose. “Speaking of which, should you people ever be interested in further work—”

“I don’t work with people who owe me money,” Sadie cut in. 

Berger laughed. “Madam, you came out of that business with a new horse. A fine Arabian, at that.” Cortone had good taste in horses. 

“So what? That don’t forgive the fact that you stole from me once. _And_ I was down a horse. Maybe next time you try and steal a bounty off me I’ll outrun you first,” Sadie said, though she grinned mischievously at him as she said it.

Foster looked over his shoulder as Sadie, John, and Arthur cantered away in the other direction. “That a good idea, Abraham?”

“Is what a good idea?” Berger asked, nudging his horse into a trot. 

“Letting them go. That’s a few thousand dollars’ worth of bounties right there.”

“I’m not particularly in the mood,” Berger said, “though be my guest, if you’re up to it.” 

Foster looked at Briar, who shook his head. “I don’t do this for the money,” Briar reminded him. “Besides, they saved our lives.” 

“I suppose they did at that,” Foster looked glum. “Well, I’m off. The _Lady Marie_ is due to dock in Saint Denis in a few days and I’ve got an invitation to play on a couple of tables.” He turned his horse, heading across the grass. 

“There’s a demon sitting on his shoulder,” Briar said, watching Foster go. The addiction rode Foster hard.

“Feel free to take a shot at it,” Berger told Briar, distracted as he flipped through his book. “Where are you headed next?”

“Back up north.”

“Another job?” Berger looked up. 

“Not the sort that you’d be interested in.” There was always work for the righteous. The world was ugly now, and would be uglier for a long time more. 

Berger hummed. “I’m headed north as well. Why don’t you tell me about this job as we go, and we’ll see whether I’d be interested?” 

God worked in quiet ways, and Briar had never refused help where it was kindly given. He nodded.

Berger

“You never did tell me why you got into this life,” Sadie said. She was brushing down her horse as the others set up camp for the night. Foster was grumbling about defensibility, Lee was stoking up a campfire.

“It’s a sad and sordid story by any measure,” Berger said, as he unsaddled Napoleon and patted the black Arabian. Napoleon nuzzled Berger’s shoulder affectionately. “I came to America when I was younger in the name of love, bandits happened, the bounties weren’t picked up, so I tried to find them myself.”

“And killed them?” Sadie’s face took on a fierce cast.

Berger laughed. “Oh no. I was young, reckless, and hardly knew how to shoot a gun. I’m lucky they didn’t decide to just shoot me in the head. Though they did beat me and tie me to a tree. I was there for days until a trapper found me. By the time I recovered and learned how to shoot from said trapper, the bandits had gotten themselves killed by diseases.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Sadie said, blinking.

“Not at all. The whole ordeal was, in a way, incredibly French. Full of irony. Voltaire would have been proud.” Berger fed Napoleon a carrot. “I’m surprised that you answered my letter.” 

“You said the money was good and you also said Lee was coming. I ain’t here on account of you,” Sadie said, though she grinned at him. From the fire, Lee let out a snort.

“You didn’t bring your friends.”

“Arthur and John? They’re doing their own thing somewhere to the west. Besides, your letter didn’t ask me to bring ‘em. Should’ve specified if you wanted them here instead of me.”

“On the contrary, I wanted you along on this hunt. Their presence would’ve been a bonus, but not a necessary one.” Berger tickled behind Napoleon’s ears and walked over to the fire, sitting down. 

Foster lifted his head, looking keenly over the dark and raising his rifle to his shoulder. He relaxed as Mei walked into the light, holding a couple of jackrabbits. Like Lee, her hair was cut short, her slight figure folded away under a heavy coat, vest, shirt, and high boots. She ignored them all as she started to skin and clean one of the rabbits, making room for Sadie as Sadie knelt beside her to work on the second. 

“Briar coming?” Sadie asked as she worked. 

“Probably not. He’s working on something in Oregon, the last I heard,” Berger said. Which wasn’t ideal, but Berger had learned not to count on Briar for regular bounties. 

“Okay then, well, if you maybe want another reliable gun on this and we’re passing Saint Denis, I got a friend there who might want in. He’s just passing time brawling for money on the street right now,” Sadie said. 

Berger thought this over. “Bill Williamson?” 

Sadie laughed sharply. “Not him. I said a friend.” 

“We’ll pass Saint Denis,” Berger decided. He opened his notebook, turning to the latest page.

Sadie

“Tea? Coffee?” Tilly asked.

“Shot of coffee and top it up with whiskey,” Sadie said. She looked around the ground floor flat with open curiosity. It wasn’t big, but it was neat and filled with books and photographs. Sadie picked out one near hidden by the shelf. A group picture of all the women in the gang—from a time before Sadie—laughing and pointing their guns at Uncle, who was on his knees pretending to look afraid. 

“Arthur bribed some photographer to come by out of Blackwater,” Tilly said, following her gaze. “That lady on the left, that’s Jenny. It was her idea. The boys have got a group picture too, but I think Pearson kept it.”

“Why is Uncle in the ladies’ picture?”

“Oh, there’s a sober photo with just us too, but it ain’t so funny. Mary-Beth has it, I think.” Tilly put the kettle on. “I wish we took a second photo. With you. Maybe poor Kieran.” 

“Maybe,” Sadie said. She was no longer that sentimental. As Tilly served coffee—with whiskey in Sadie’s case—Sadie passed over the big envelope she’d been holding. Tilly opened it and glanced inside. “That’s the original,” Sadie said. “Burned the copies.” Tilly’s Pinkerton file. 

“Thanks, Sadie. I really owe you.”

“Nah, it was nothing.”

“I hope it didn’t cost you,” Tilly said anxiously.

“I got a friend what’s a Pinkerton contractor. He got it for me. I didn’t just get your file. I got all the girls’ files. Pearson too. And Uncle’s. Everyone else’s is kinda tricky.” 

“Ah.” Tilly closed her fingers around her cup. “I was hoping… They still looking for Arthur? And John, Charles?” 

“Lives like that have got consequences,” Sadie said. Arthur and the others understood that. “I think they’d be fine if they keep their heads down. There’s other gangs now. Bigger, crueler ones.” 

“You think so? That the Pinkertons will just forget?”

“They don’t forget,” Sadie said, because she’d been on bounty hunts with Berger built on grudges far older than the Pinkertons’ with Dutch. “But they have got other work to do. So you be careful too.” 

“Don’t need to tell me that,” Tilly said, with a quick smile. “You’re the one I’m worried about. Going bounty hunting and all. By yourself.”

“Not usually by myself now,” Sadie admitted. “Charles likes to tag along. Sometimes Arthur and John, though they ain’t ‘round these parts much right now. Got a few other friends too. Nice folk.” Mostly.

“Where _is_ Charles?”

“He doesn’t much like Saint Denis. He’s catching up with Pearson over in Rhodes.” Sadie looked carefully at Tilly. “You doing all right?” 

“I got a decent business that I like running. And with this—” Tilly raised the file, “—I’m free to do other things now. Like get married.” 

“You got someone in mind?” Sadie asked. 

“Not yet, but I ain’t in a hurry. I’ve met my share of cruel men. I’d rather be a spinster than have to live with someone like that.” 

“I seen you handle a shotgun,” Sadie said, taking a sip of her tea. “I got no fear of you having to do that. Though, if you ever need my help, just write to me. Leave it with Pearson if you can’t find me.” 

“Same for you, Sadie Adler. If you ever need my help, don’t you ever hesitate to get in touch.” Tilly smiled at her warmly. “You got me, Abigail, and Jack to Annesburg after that mess.” 

“You’re the one who had the bright idea of sneaking onto that cargo ship bound north,” Sadie said. They’d waited quietly at the next port until John came for Abigail and Jack, then they’d parted ways. Sadie to the west, Tilly back south, John and the others to the north. Everyone had cried. Even John had a bit of a sniffle. It’d been like a whole chapter of their lives closing, and Sadie hadn’t been sure if she’d see any of them again. 

“So. Have you met anyone special?” Tilly grinned. “Met any handsome bounty hunters in your travels?” 

“I recognise that look. I ain’t got no gossip for you, Miss Jackson. Naw. I’m done with all that. Though. I _have_ met some handsome bounty hunters, so if you wants an introduction I’m happy to help,” Sadie said, with a wink. “There’s this real fine man who comes by sometimes on my bigger hunts who might suit you. Religious sort, but he’s the handsomest man I ever did see.” 

Tilly pursed her lips. “I’m done with all that. Men with guns, riding out nowhere, coming back shot full of lead. Think I’d like to settle down quietly and marry a lawyer or something.” She paused for a while, sipping her tea. “Though, uh. How handsome a man are we talking about here? Out of scientific curiosity, you understand.”

John

Dear Abigail,  
I am glad to hear that you and Jack are doing well. Congratulations on the new house. I knew things would work out for you. You always did have a good head for business. Did you know, Arthur and I saw your paper and stationery being sold in a fancy store in Saint Denis? Arthur sure was proud to see it. Kept telling the store owner he knew the paper maker. He bought a new notebook and I bought some paper. I suppose it is mighty strange for me to write back to you on your own paper, but I thought you would like to know that we were thinking of you. And Jack may like this stamp.

Arthur has enclosed with this letter a full set of those picture books that Jack used to like so much, though I think he might by now have outgrown them. I have sent everyone your regards as you asked. Mary-Beth said she will write you letters of her own now that you have got a fixed address. Charles and Sadie are cornering the bounty hunting business around these parts, though I think you know that—Charles said he writes to everyone now and then. 

Pearson said he was thinking of getting married. Sadie and Arthur thought that was really funny for some reason. Tilly has been seeing a friend of ours, a preacher of sorts. Swanson’s doing well in New York, he said he will write to you too. We found Trelawny in Boston running a bar, of all things. As to Karen, I regret to say that we are still trying to find her. Tilly is worried. If you or Jack have any ideas or leads, let me know. We also haven't heard from Uncle or Strauss.

Dutch has disappeared. He is not in Dead Man’s Pass any longer. We think he has gone south. We have not found Bill or Javier either. As to Micah, Arthur doesn’t think we should go after him. Said he agrees with you, that it will just bring down Pinkerton trouble on all of us that we do not need. 

As for me, I am truly happy. I hope you are too. Give Jack my regards. Thank you for everything.  
Sincerely,  
John

Arthur

Mornings tended to be cold on the shores of O’Creagh’s Run. Arthur liked that fine. He was folded in a thick coat, smoking in a chair by the jetty that overlooked the small lake. Misty morning. The trees that lined the lake had softened into shadows, layered against a pale gray sky. Fish flickered in the water just beyond in small tantalising shoals. No pike this close to the shore. Nothing as big as the one he’d caught with Hamish left, anyhow.

On mornings like this with the world rich with only birdsong and insects, it was easy to imagine what it was like if they’d all made it. Dutch’s dream, fully realized in some land far away from other people. Peaceful. It was only a dream though, could only ever be that. Even here, the railway ran close enough to the north that sometimes Arthur could hear the whistling of a train echoing off the peaks. Civilization, ever close, even when hidden. 

“Arthur?” John sounded drowsy. Arthur took a last drag of his cigarette and stubbed it out, ambling back towards the cabin. Off to the side, Buell whickered at him, swishing his golden tail. Rachel was further away, grazing. 

John yawned as Arthur let himself into the cabin, stretching under the furs as Arthur hung up the coat and pulled off his boots. He let out an annoyed noise as Arthur burrowed back under the furs, flinching away from Arthur’s toes. “Fuck… you’re fucking cold,” John complained. He yelped as Arthur deliberately rubbed his hands up John’s flanks. 

“And you’re warm enough for the both of us,” Arthur told him unmercifully. He kissed John as John started to complain, twisting his fingers lazily into John’s hair. Time had long untangled any awkwardness between them into simplicity. John groaned, rubbing invitingly against Arthur, his warm hands pulling up Arthur’s undershirt, stroking over the muscle underneath. 

“C’mon,” John whispered. He pushed up his hips, pressing his hardening flesh against Arthur’s belly. Arthur ignored him, nipping down John’s neck to the hollow of his throat, nuzzling the scent there, the sweat. John grumbled, always impatient in the morning. He fumbled at Arthur’s belt, pushing down his pants and drawers and cursing as Arthur didn’t try to help. _Arthur_ was fine with slow. Wasn’t like they didn’t have time. Time enough for Arthur to get used to this, to rework what they were to each other to a form that fit for them both. Time enough for the rest of their lives. 

Arthur mouthed down John’s chest, tucking his head under the furs. He laughed as John growled and hauled him back up, twisting around to push Arthur down onto his back. John clenched his hands into Arthur’s undershirt and kissed Arthur hard enough to bruise them both, compressing his hunger between them in angry gasps. Arthur squeezed John’s ass, kneading the muscle, slipping in fingers to tease the stretched hole. Still loose. Tacky, even. John let out a hoarse and uneven breath as Arthur pressed in a couple of fingers, swiping through the mess still inside. Grinding in his fingers easily to the knuckles and trying to push further. 

John grabbed for the oil at the side table, accidentally knocking it onto the floor. Arthur started to laugh, turning his face away when John cursed him again and swatted at his jaw. As John leaned down to get the oil Arthur licked a lazy swipe up his ribs to a nipple and bit down, making John yelp and nearly tumble off the bed. “Not _helping_ , asshole,” John said, though he was biting down on a laugh as he bounced the stoppered oil bottle pointedly off Arthur’s chest. 

Arthur ignored him, nuzzling scars old and new alike. Old gunshot wounds, worn white by the years. A new gash dangerously near the belly from an enterprising mountain lion that had gotten too close for comfort. John squirmed and unstoppered the oil and yelped as Arthur bit him over his chest, then leaned up to suck a bruise against John’s throat. When it was just them out here, Arthur liked to leave marks. Eliza hadn’t liked them and he’d never gotten that far with Mary. Never this far with anyone, to be fair, never had his life tangled up like this, waking up every morning like this, shorn of every courteous lie he’d ever had to say to make himself more palatable to another human being. John knew exactly who and what Arthur was and Arthur knew the same about John and the result was something like this, in between a gift and a curse. 

John managed to get the cork free off the bottle, spilling some onto Arthur’s belly in his haste. He slicked Arthur’s cock up as Arthur scissored his fingers lazily inside him, listening to John panting urgently on top of him. Arthur curled his hands over John’s waist as John sank down on top of him, letting out strangled gasps until he had ground all the way down. “Christ,” John breathed, even as Arthur grit his teeth and concentrated on staying still. “Always feels so good.”

“Goddamned liar,” Arthur said, because it had to hurt, he could see that it did, no matter how much prep John had the patience for beforehand. He stroked his hands up and down John’s thighs as John laughed and arched his back. Started to move, even though it had to hurt. John took up a sharp, harsh rhythm, using his weight to drop himself down to the root of Arthur’s cock and rolling lazily back up. His cheeks were flushed to his ears, making the scars on his cheek ruddy against the stubble. Whimpering “Arthur, _Arthur_ ,” like this was the first time all over again, like he didn’t still quite believe this was happening. Arthur bucked into John’s tight and yielding heat, gasping, until he needed more and John was tiring out, slowing down. 

He always let John beg for it though. If only because there were few things sweeter, watching John break right down out of sheer desperation. “Please,” John gasped, scratching weals down Arthur’s chest. 

“Touch yourself first, I wanna watch,” Arthur said, leaning up on an elbow. 

John groaned in frustration but obeyed. He stroked himself slowly, thighs trembling against Arthur’s ribs, for show at first. Sooner or later John would get lost in the pleasure, tugging himself harder, until he was shivering and tensing up, getting close. Arthur waited. Watched for that point. Rolled John roughly onto his back once he saw it and pushed up John’s thighs to spread him wide. Arthur kissed John long and deep before holding him open to take him in brutal thrusts, rocking the bed beneath them. John clawed blunt nails down Arthur’s back, panting strangled groans against Arthur’s cheek. He wailed Arthur’s name when he was coming, locking up then going limp and pliant. Arthur ground into John’s sweet, tight heat and went still, breathing hard as his cock pulsed, rocking slowly to rub his seed deeper. Trying to scar himself into John like the marks on John’s skin. 

They took breakfast on the jetty after they washed up, curled against each other, Arthur’s back to one of the posts and John pressed against his flank, sharing a wedge of cheese and some bread. John tossed crumbs into the water for the waiting fish, legs stretched out in the sun. 

“If you keep doing that they’d get so tame that they won’t be fun to catch,” Arthur said. 

“Fishing’s kinda cruel anyway,” John said, flicking in another crumb. “You lure some poor fish into swallowing a metal hook, then drag it to shore when it’s all tired out and beat its brains out. Ain’t quick like hunting is.” 

“I don’t see you turning down the fish I catch.”

“I got nothing against eating the fish, just the catching of them. And it’s boring.” 

“You’re meant to contemplate life and such when you’re fishing.” Or so Hosea had said.

“Maybe it’s only old men who see the point of that,” John said with a cheeky grin, which was why when Sadie rode up to the cabin Arthur was busy trying to throw John off the edge of the jetty. 

“Seriously,” Sadie said, pulling a face. Her chestnut Arabian mare snorted loudly as though she agreed. “You boys ever grow up?”

“Morning to you too,” Arthur said, though he let go of John. 

“Saddle up, since y’all obviously have got nothing better to do. Got a job that I could use your help on,” Sadie said. 

“Where’s Charles?” John asked, letting Arthur pull him to his feet. 

“Checking on some leads. He’ll catch up. You boys in or not?” 

“We’re in,” Arthur said, and went to saddle the horses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canadian exports in the 1900s lol https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/economic-history-of-central-canada

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> \--  
> twitter: manic_intent  
> tumblr: manic-intent.tumblr.com  
> 


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